


Star Maker, Dream Maker, Spaceman

by Lang (orphan_account)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Body Modification, Come Eating, Creampie, Galra Keith (Voltron), Intersex, Lonely Keith, M/M, Mpreg, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rating: NC17, Touch-Starved Shiro, Tragicomedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-17
Updated: 2016-11-13
Packaged: 2018-08-15 10:52:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 28,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8053513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Lang
Summary: The Galra gave Shiro a new arm, a bad case of PTSD, and a vagina.Keith helps with that last thing.





	1. Chapter 1

At first, Shiro didn’t think very hard about the new folds behind his cock. 

He stared at the arm, wondering, worrying. He rubbed a finger now and then over the scar on his nose. But this — this piece of Galra engineering was something he ignored completely.

There were more important things to worry about. He was too busy to busy to worry about his lower anatomy when he was following Keith and a bunch of cadets into the desert, or helping Pidge look for the Green Lion, or in the bowels of a Galra ship, watching his arm crackle with an energy that didn’t burn him.

But even if he didn't think about it, he knew what was down there. He’d figured it out back at Keith’s place, changing into the clothes Keith had somehow known to keep for him. As soon as he touched it, horrified, he had an overwhelming flash of purple hallways and the crackling memory of violence.

But he let it be. He pulled on trousers that were four times tighter than they’d been a year ago and went to look at Keith’s wall of lion conspiracies. Keith had always had a tendency for that. Now, with this unquestionable sense that there was _more_ out there, a more that had taken the Holts and left Shiro himself changed, Shiro decided that Keith's conspiracies must have some validity. He could trust in them. He had to. With a memory gridlock in his head and the danger of the Galra and his own body so foreign, he didn’t have a choice but to trust that they’d find something in the desert. And then that the wormhole wouldn’t lead them astray. And then that they were meant to go in the castle, become paladins, pilot Voltron.

He had to believe in those things. They meant escape, resistance. Shiro was missing a year, but somehow he knew that when the universe gave you a chance to fight, for yourself or for others, you took it. You couldn't let yourself get caught up in thinking about the things that terrified you, rendered you useless.

So even though in the first few days he could already feel the sensitive rub of his clit, and the occasional sticky residue — well. He still didn’t think about any of that. 

Then came those first weeks of training, before the food fight. He had a heavy feeling, and shooting pains in legs and by his hips, like his whole lower body was askew. He took the first chance he could to excuse himself. In the gleaming egg-shaped hall that passed for the Castle of Lions’ lavatory, leaning on a urinal shaped like an intricate metal tulip, he pulled off his suit and his clothes and found himself sticky and red everywhere. The smell was iron. 

He was on a table. A voice above him told him what champions they would make. What strength they could create. 

Then he was panting, coming back to himself. It worked. It all worked, not just the vagina but everything else too, insides rearranged, whole body refashioned.

There had been glances from Keith all week. Impulsive. Telling. But Shiro had been avoiding telling him this, avoiding what it could mean, that the Galra had done this to him. Not thinking about it.

The bleeding didn’t last long, barely two days. But it made up his mind for him. It made things too certain to avoid telling Keith any longer.

They had never been exclusive, the two of them. There had never been anything to gain from a relationship with Shiro. He had been promised to the Kerberos mission for years. 

There was, possibly, less to gain now. 

“I have to tell you something,” he said, walking Keith back to their rooms after another failed day of training.

Keith was the Red Lion, impulse, and he’d been looking for an excuse to let that impulse run wild. They were barely in his room before his mouth was on Shiro’s, his arms around him. Warm. Human. The first time in a year.

Shiro hadn’t even realized how long it had been. With his memories so cloudy and the responsibility for the team slathered thick on his mind, he could forget that no one had touched him like this since before he’d left Earth with the Holts. And this wasn’t just anyone kissing him now, but Keith, talented and good-looking and deadly honest about everything.

It was an effort to separate himself.

“You have the right to know, if we do this now,” he said. “I’m different.” 

“Different?” Keith said, voice tight. “How?”

“It would probably be easier to show you,” Shiro admitted.

Anyone else would have heard a warning. But Keith wasn’t like that. He was a pilot’s pilot, too wild even for the Garrison. Warnings were dares. Danger was something you dealt with head-on. 

“So show me, Shiro.” 

Shiro hoped he was being gentle about this. He wanted to be gentle about it. He didn’t want to think about how unpleasant it could be for Keith, what Keith might be thinking as Shiro pulled off his clothes, sat back on a ledge in the wall, spread his legs. Lifted aside his cock, the cool metal of his fingers making the whole thing clinical.

He didn’t look at Keith’s face. He looked down instead. This was the first time he’d seen it like this in full light, tucked behind his normal equipment. The first time he’d seen how flushed it was. Dusky pink. Foreign.

He thought, weirdly and with a flash of guilt, of the Holts going over Canadian fauna on the voyage to Kerberos. Some father-son scientist game. At least this left him cold. He wouldn’t get wet thinking of that, bobcats and cougars and anatomical recitation.

“I think I have more,” he told Keith. His voice stayed even; that was good. “I’m pretty sure I do. Fallopian tubes, uterus.” 

After a minute he gingerly touched his chest. Maybe those, too, though thank god they didn’t seem to look any different. At the moment.

“I can get pregnant,” he finished. “I think the Galra wanted me to, eventually.”

Still he didn’t look at Keith. He looked down again. His arm reached mechanically for his clothes and he felt a little embarrassed to have shown Keith like this. Anyone else, anyone less insistent on always knowing the _truth_ , and he wouldn’t have done it this way. Or — no. Maybe he’d needed to do it this way, to really look at it. He couldn’t pretend that this was for Keith’s benefit. Maybe it was for his own. 

But before he could cover up, Keith was kneeling between his legs. He looked serious and handsome. He’d always had a casual beauty, but in this creamy light that the Alteans insisted fooled your sleep receptors (funny, that Keith’s room had it too. Shiro had thought he was the only one having trouble sleeping), every angle was more pronounced, the overall effect almost delicate. Hard to believe that this was Controversy Keith, who’d been dismissed out of hand for the Thalassa mission. Who’d come for Shiro when the Garrison had strapped him to a table.

But something in Keith’s voice was terrible.

“Shiro,” he said, wild about it. “Did they—?”

It took Shiro a few seconds to understand the question, but the answer was no. For a moment he was no longer in Keith’s room, but back in a place with purple walls. Memory was best when it returned like this, in useful shards, flashes of context. They hadn’t actually bred him. They’d meant to. He’d escaped first.

Something like disgrace flushed through him. Why had it taken this to make him escape? Why hadn’t it been — been whatever had happened to the Holts?

But that memory didn’t come. Carefully, he tried to push Keith away and close his legs. Keith refused to be pushed.

“ _Did they_?”

“No,” Shiro said, shaking his head. “No. Don’t think like that, okay? It’s alright. It’s not like that. It’s not that bad. I just thought you had the right to know.”

Keith raised his hand and let it hover there, before Shiro's -- Shiro's pussy. He was still wearing his gloves. Shiro watched him make a face and pull one off with his teeth, something ferocious in the gesture. 

In response, something down there seemed to crest. Suddenly Shiro could feel the air lapping at him. Everything down there felt cool and profane, slick with want. 

“Can I touch it?” Keith asked. 

Shiro’s thinking brain supplied the context. They’d never been exclusive, but while he had always pursued only other male pilots, Keith was harder to categorize. Keith — well, Keith had never had many flirtations, actually. But he’d always been clear about the fact that he was a bit more equal opportunity about these things. Not that this factored. Shiro was a man. Just an altered one. 

“Is it okay?” Keith asked again, lower, more worried. He was so close that Shiro could feel Keith’s breath on his skin. Shiro’s pussy abandoned his brain. Now he felt too hot. He nodded before he could help himself, and then Keith’s fingers were parting the outer labia, exposing the pink clit. He began to rub along the folds. Slow, but good. Shiro was surprised at how good it was. Everything was going damp.

Keith got to his clit and thumbed it, left it throbbing. Shiro gasped.

“You’re getting wet, Shiro,” Keith murmured, still so close that his breath ghosted over Shiro’s skin. It was like he couldn’t look away. He dipped his fingers back into the folds and spread Shiro’s slick all over. He dipped in again and again and returned to Shiro’s clit like it was an obsession, until Shiro’s mound was completely hot and flushed. It sent a new message to Shiro’s brain.

Shiro wanted this. 

His hips bucked against the touches, moving on their own. His flesh hand clutched the ledge so hard that it was nearly white. His cock hardened, despite the cool metal of his fingers. When Keith finally pushed aside his folds to see his vaginal opening, Shiro was breathing so hard that it was like shivering.

“Can I—“

“Yes, Keith,” Shiro managed. 

He was wet enough that one finger didn’t hurt, though he did need a minute to adjust to the intrusion. Keith again used his teeth to pull off his remaining glove, then let his other hand return to Shiro’s clit, coaxing it, letting it peek out from the hood. It began to feel pleasant. As Keith stroked his clit, his other hand dipped two fingers in-out of Shiro's insides, let Shiro get used to the feeling. It wasn’t so different from sex before, the mix of raw penetration and insistent pleasure. It was just a different hole now. And wetter. A lot wetter. 

He wanted Keith inside. He wanted to know what it felt like in his vagina. He didn’t want this to be foreign. This was him now. He couldn’t ignore it and there was no point being dramatic about it. And Keith was turning all his horrible unease to pleasure, and Shiro wanted him to enjoy this, too.

“We can have sex,” he told Keith. “If you want that.”

Keith looked up at him, eyes dark, expression wry.

“This doesn’t feel like sex yet?” 

Even through the haze of pleasure, Shiro felt like rolling his eyes. _This_ was the cadet he’d known, the sarcasm-tinged wonder he’d left behind when he’d graduated into the Kerberos assignment. He didn’t think he’d let himself miss anyone when he was with the Galra. It would have meant despair. But now he did miss Keith, even if Keith was right in front of him. He missed what it could have been. He hated that he’d spent twelve months without these flashes of wry personality.

Then Keith lightly squeezed his clit and startled another gasp out of him, and he couldn’t think about it anymore. 

“You know what I mean,” he said, between breaths, between bucking up against Keith’s fingers. 

“Yes, sir,” Keith said seriously. 

And for a moment, horribly, he pulled his fingers out. His touch vanished as he worked to undo his own clothes. Then Keith's cock bobbed out, flushed with blood and beautiful, and he straddled Shiro the way he used to, letting their cocks touch. It promised good things. Shiro had always liked frottage. But he wanted more right now.

“I want you in my vagina,” he told Keith. 

Keith bit his lip, looking annoyed at something.

“We don’t have a condom.”

Right. Pregnancy. Shiro was a problem-solver, though. Top of his class. He considered pointing out that his vagina was Galra-designed equipment, and that possibly it only worked for Galra. But then they didn’t know that, and the thought was already making him go soft. He considered suggesting that they go ask Coran for whatever the Alteans used, but that would probably involve magical mind-melding or advanced nanotechnology, and maybe an embarrassing anecdote about Yelmores that would kill the moment. He considered just pointing out that Lance probably had condoms, but then having to ask Lance would just ruin Keith’s mood. 

He settled for, “You can pull out. Right?”

He didn’t mean for it to come out like a dare. He was never like that with Keith. But he was gasping so hard with pleasure by now that it sounded like a dare. And to Keith facing down a dare was as natural as breathing. 

“Yessir,” Keith said again, and then the flushed head of his cock rubbed along Shiro’s outer folds. Without Keith’s fingers spreading him, his pussy was nothing more than a pink slit crowned by that insistent, still-peeking clit. Then Keith’s cock parted him again, displaying his inner lips obscenely. By now Shiro’s penis was straining again, blocking most of the view, but he thought he knew what it would look like to Keith.

That big cock against that wet, soft little hole.

He knew it would hurt when Keith penetrated him and it did. Keith gave such a moan that it almost made up for it. Shiro hooked his legs around him and breathed through the painful fullness. Keith felt _huge_. A part of Shiro thought he couldn’t possibly go deeper than this. But, from the way Keith was moaning, there always seemed to be more soft, damp give down there. Shiro felt it giving and a part of him liked it, even through the ache.

Keith was slow at first, trying to give Shiro time to adjust. But when his balls hit Shiro’s skin, Shiro breathed out hard. His face was buried in Keith's neck.

"Shiro?" Keith said, voice rough and quiet. "You okay?"

He nodded until Keith started moving in him. Keith was inside that hot new tunnel, and the pain gave way faster than Shiro had expected. Keith's cock dragged along places Shiro had no idea he'd even had. The tight friction felt so good. The absolute fullness did too, Keith filling him up completely and retreating, then plunging in again. He touched one spot inside Shiro that made Shiro bite his knuckles to keep from yelling. He felt so good, so sated, and then every nerve begged and begged for more until he was begging for the same in Keith's ear.

"Don't stop," he said. "Please. _Please_."

Keith sped up in answer, and dragged that perfect spot from him again, over and over. Some part of him had thought he'd be able to warn Keith, or remind him. Maybe some part of Keith thought he could pull out in time. But when they were joined like this it was hard not to focus on Keith fucking into him, filling him. How good it felt. How he kept coming when Keith hit that spot, coming wet and messy and not caring. Something in Shiro almost wanted to know what it would feel like when Keith did come.

Then, by accident, Keith did. 

"Fuck," he said. "Sorry, Shiro. Sorry."

Shiro could feel Keith's come inside him, hot and good and too sudden to prevent. When Keith did pull out, Shiro's pussy was red and spread wider than it had been before, and dripping with Keith's come. Some of it dribbled out of him, thick and hot. Most of it stayed inside.

"Fuck," Keith said. "I'm sorry!" His fingers were back now, trying to scoop some of it out. Shiro was too hazy with pleasure to be much help, but together, they tried.

"It's alright," he told Keith. "It was an accident."

And it had felt good, the first thing to feel that good in a long time. Shiro wouldn't let Keith feel guilty about it. It was just this once. It wouldn't happen again.


	2. Chapter 2

It was almost embarrassing how much Keith liked Shiro's vagina, but it was more embarrassing that he hadn't pulled out in time. 

They were running a risk. Shiro could get pregnant. Even though _pregnant_ wasn't supposed to happen to someone like _Shiro_. It happened to foster sisters who were quietly shuffled back into state care. It happened to women who showed up at the main Children's Services office, red-eyed and slow and heavy. 

It had even formed the basis for a few schoolyard taunts, once. _Hey, I heard you killed your mom. She got fat with you for nine months, and that was the thanks she got?_

Keith had no idea if it was true. He didn't have access to his records. That was protective, people had said. That would let him start life anew if he ever got adopted. But he'd stopped thinking that he might be adoptable a long time ago. He wasn't. Family units weren't his thing. Everyone had family. Just -- not him. The closest thing he had was Shiro and the paladins, and he wasn't going to delude himself into thinking that any of them saw him as family. They were a team with a job to do. The only kind of force Allura could scrape together for Voltron. That was it.

Now he made it two steps into Allura's control chamber to ask about condoms, or whatever it was Alteans used for contraception. Space sheaths. Tiny lion pheromones. He didn't know. But Allura was talking, low and serious, to the hologram of her father. It felt invasive, so he backtracked and hit Coran on the way out.

"Red Paladin!" Coran said, beaming. "The team's old impulsive nerve! Something the matter?"

'Impulsive nerve' struck a nerve. He was impulsive. He'd -- he'd kept thinking it was fine, and he'd given in to how tight and wet and good Shiro had felt. And so he hadn't pulled out in time.

_Dad should have pulled out as soon as the condom broke, huh? Now look what happened. You._

He snarled something at Coran and retreated completely. Maybe it wasn't worth it to ask for a space condom or whatever. He didn't need to be fucking Shiro's vagina. There were other things they could do. Keith had a shameful mental log book of what they'd already done, in the days before Kerberos. Kissed behind the stage the day of Shiro's graduation rehearsal, then come together in their clothes after Shiro's first official day as a licensed Garrison pilot. Three more instances of frottage each time Shiro had been asked to visit the cadets' compound to demonstrate his flying skills. The day of the official winter air show, when Shiro had gone down on Keith, throat clenching around Keith's dick. The night after Shiro had first met Dr. Holt, when he'd fucked Keith, careful and clumsy, sweet despite the ache in Keith's ass. 

Then the night Keith had learned that his skills were enough to promote him a grade, like Shiro's skills had done for Shiro a few years earlier. But the Garrison wouldn't allow that for Keith. Because his attitude would set him back a year, so it averaged out. And he'd better not ask again until he learned to work with others. 

Keith had been especially impulsive that night, and gone for what he wanted, and fucked Shiro twice, long and slow. Like they were something serious.

Even though they hadn't been that. They were friends. They fucked. That was it. Keith hadn't had the right to be serious about Shiro, who was tall and well-behaved with blinding white teeth, the poster-boy for the Garrison. The only pilot good enough to have a name worth remembering. But Shiro wasn't just good; outside of piloting, where Keith had the edge on him, Shiro was _better_. Better at following rules, better at making friends, legendary for his academics and his commitment to the program.

This Shiro was different. 

Bigger, more scarred, and in certain solemn moments more quietly grim. There was no bargaining with the Galra. The old Shiro would never have said anything like that. The old Shiro had liked the optimistic diplomacy of Garrison training. All the galaxy is ours for the taking, but we won't take. Whatever we find out there, we'll be kind first.

Keith had a moral side that mourned that original Shiro, but it was hard to balance that moral side of him with the breathless gratitude he felt to get his friend back, any version of his friend. Even this more battered version. In fact, this new Shiro awakened slightly different feelings. Understanding, a little bit. Fervent respect, even greater than it had been before. And ever-greater want, too.

It dunked Keith headlong into guilt to think about how much he liked this Shiro, less compromising and glittering than the first. So he tried not to think about it. That was easy.

It wasn't so easy to keep from thinking about Shiro's pussy. 

It was _beautiful_. 

Keith didn't toss that word around easily. Generally speaking, beautiful didn't mean a lot to him. But the thought of that wet, pink cleft tucked just behind Shiro's balls awoke something in him. He couldn't help but think of it, how rose-colored and inviting it was. He wanted to touch it again. He wanted to lick it. He was fooling himself if he thought he'd be able to keep away from Shiro's vagina. He'd already ruined one training session by refusing to connect mentally with the others, thoughts too wrapped in the promise of burying himself balls-deep in that pussy again. It was warm and tight, and it was Shiro's. And only competitive, argumentative Keith had ever had the chance to touch it. To claim it. 

He had to find a condom. Preferably one he didn't have to beg off Lance. 

He was considering ransacking Lance's quarters in secret (the pros -- obtaining condoms. The cons? Shiro would definitely know who'd stolen it and why, and Keith had never been good at facing Shiro's quietly kind disappointment), when the solution occurred to him. 

Pidge. Pidge had a girlfriend. 

He was about 75% convinced that Pidge wouldn't need a condom, though. Not for the reasons Keith did. But then he didn't know anything about the girlfriend. So it was still worth it to ask. 

He found Pidge in the healing room where they were keeping the freed Galra prisoners. Pidge was fiddling with something in his (their? His? Pidge seemed okay with his) Galra robot orb. Pidge was muttering about potential recovery of the memory banks and didn't seem to hear Keith come up, and so jumped nearly a foot when Keith said, "I need a favor."

Keith said it low. The Castle of Lions had magnificent soaring ceilings and a lot of echoes, and both Lance and Hunk were busybodies. 

"Keith!" Pidge said, too-loud. 

Keith put a finger to his lips. 

"It's private," he said. "Can we go--"

"I need to be where I can hear the prisoners," Pidge said firmly. "In case they wake up. I want to ask them about my dad and Matt."

"It'll take like a second."

"Just ask me right here," Pidge said, annoyed. 

Pidge was stubborn, and so was Keith, but there was something absolutely _unmoving_ to Pidge that none of the rest of them had. Maybe that came with the territory when you lost people. Keith had only ever lost Shiro, and that had pushed him from an acceptable risk into a cadet too wild for the Garrison to waste time on. Pidge, though, didn't go wild. Pidge became mulish. 

Keith sighed, and dropped his voice even lower. 

"I need something," he said. "Condoms. Do you have any?"

To Pidge's credit, the answer came out circumspect and low ("Why would I have condoms?") but unfortunately too low to hear above the shriek from the doorway. 

"I knew it!" Lance said. "I knew you were being sneaky! Sneaking across the castle. Sneaking in here. Asking Pidge for condoms--"

"You could have just asked Lance," said Hunk, next to him. "Or me."

"--like a sleaze-- wait. Why do you have condoms?" Lance asked Hunk. 

"I always keep two on me," Hunk said, shrugging. "It's part of being responsible."

"Oh. Okay. Me too. Wait, two?"

"You use one, but maybe you forget to replace it. So you need a backup," Hunk explained. 

"I know _that_ ," Lance said. "But Hunk. Hunk, my man. You're thinking small. It's a big galaxy. What if you need two at once? Or three? And then you need to replace those?"

"Wait, how many do you carry?" Hunk said. 

"Uh, fourteen," Lance said, like this was the obvious answer. "I calculated the baseline amount I'd need for sexy alien encounters like three months ago."

"Was that what you were doing during the midterm?" Hunk asked. "No wonder you almost flunked."

"We're not talking about that! Keith has no condoms. I'm more prepared. I have fourteen. I win."

Keith could feel his eye twitching. 

"I just need one," he snapped. 

"No problem, man," Hunk said, reaching for his pocket. 

"Don't give him one," Lance insisted. "It's his own fault he's unprepared."

"Wait," Pidge said. "Why does Keith need a condom? Who are you sleeping with?"

Three pairs of eyes swiveled to look at him. Keith considered just punching somebody and running away. No. Punching somebody and picking Hunk's pocket and _then_ running away. 

Hunk seemed to sense the potential danger, because he took a careful step back. 

"Uh, just to clarify?" he said. "Keith's not sleeping with me."

"And he's obviously not sleeping with me," Pidge pointed out, "or he'd know I don't carry any condoms."

Lance said, "Well, he's not sleeping with me, not even if he begs--"

"I'd rather sleep with a Galra," Keith said flatly. 

"--because I have standards--"

"Okay, who cares," Pidge said. "The point is that he's not sleeping with the three of us. So who is he sleeping with? It can't be..."

Pidge's eyes went wide. Pidge knew. Now they all had to know. And Keith hadn't discussed this with Shiro, hadn't discussed what would happen if the others found out, or even if Shiro was alright with that.

"Oh my god," Lance breathed out. "You're sleeping with _Coran_?"

"What?" Keith said, momentarily thrown.

"Dude," Hunk told Lance. "Dude. Really? That's your guess?"

"Well, it's not Allura," Lance said mulishly. "I refuse to believe that Allura would touch this guy."

"Dude," Hunk said again. He reached into his pocket again and tossed Keith the condom. Garrison-issue. Keith pocketed it and made his escape. By the time they'd explained things to Lance he was halfway down the corridor, but he could still hear Lance shrieking.

"I can't believe you gave it to him! That lets him have sex with my hero! My hero!"

Keith's too. He felt perverse, but he didn't care. He found Shiro in his berth, lying very still but not asleep. Keith showed him the condom.

"How did you--?"

"I asked Pidge, but Hunk ended up giving it to me. They know."

Shiro frowned, but it was a considering frown, not a disappointed one.

"I was thinking we couldn't keep it from them for long anyway," he said. "Not with the bond we all have through Voltron. I should check in with each of them to make sure they're alright with it."

This knocked Keith askew. The uncertainty must have shown on his face, because Shiro said quickly, "It doesn't change anything if they're not, Keith. I'd still want you. I just -- I want to know that it isn't going to mess things up when we form Voltron. I want them to know that, too."

Keith bit his lip, but nodded. It wasn't an unqualified guarantee that this could continue, but then he'd never had that. He'd never expected it. And yet a part of him still went incandescent with fury at the thought that he might have to lose this. Fury and, for some reason, self-disgust.

"Forget it," he said, shaking his head and getting up to leave. "Talk to them first."

"Keith," Shiro said. He didn't bar Keith's way. Just pulled himself out of the berth and looked at him. One of those open, damnably fair looks Shiro was so good at. The kind that said he believed in people and wanted more from them, but still accepted them for whatever they were willing to give.

A small part of Keith wondered if Shiro had figured out a trick here. When he extended this kind of acceptance to you, you couldn't help but think you had to extend the same to him. Shiro could believe and trust in you so perfectly that you had no choice but to believe and trust back.

It made Keith a little miserable and it made Keith adore him and it made Keith _want_. Not a lot of people had ever believed in Keith. 

He sighed and pulled out the condom again.

"I got it, so we might as well use it," he said.

"Only if you're comfortable," Shiro said softly, like he was reminding Keith that Keith was free to back out at any time. But then he sat back down in the berth and began to peel off his clothes, exposing his scarred, strong muscles and the perfect planes of his stomach. So how could Keith back out? It would take an inhuman will to say no to Shiro.

This time they did it lying down in the berth, cramped and close. Keith spent a good few minutes getting him wet with his tongue and fingers, dipping over and over into those willing little folds. Shiro's vagina was so tight and soft. The softness was something Keith loved wholeheartedly, the way it gave and sucked him in. His tongue, his fingers. Shiro's pussy accepted it all, flushing such a gorgeous red. Going slick. 

As he worked the condom onto his cock, he lapped at Shiro's inner lips. Then he then licked a stripe up to Shiro's clit. It was poking up and begging for his attention. He sucked at it once, twice, and Shiro gasped, bucking forwards. Keith didn't mind that. He brought up a finger and slid it right into Shiro's opening, betting that Shiro would take it with little resistance. Shiro was so wet already that he did. He felt hot and tight. His pussy pulsed around Keith's finger. His hips fucked into the touch. Shiro moaned, clearly needing more. 

When Keith pushed into him, his pussy swallowed up Keith's whole cock with no complaint. From this angle, Keith could pump into him with some force. His cock fucked into Shiro's channel, his balls slapped against the globes of Shiro's ass. Even with the condom on, the heat and tightness were phenomenal.

And doing it this way meant he could see Shiro. Shiro wrapped his legs around Keith's waist and his arms around Keith's shoulders and got into the rhythm, sobbing out his need. Keith leaned forward and kissed him sloppily and found his mouth a hot, needy complement to his equally needy vagina. When Keith came, it was almost as good as it had been the time before. 

Almost. A dirty voice inside Keith didn't like the rubber so much. Shiro's raw walls had been warmer, better. A little risk would be worth that. The risk might even be part of the thrill. 

He stayed tucked in the berth for the night because Shiro asked him to. Shiro's voice was soft and spent when he admitted, "Sometimes I don't sleep so well."

Neither did Keith.

And they didn't really sleep now, so much as drift. Keith sprawled on top of Shiro and Shiro didn't seem to mind, and now and then Keith would turn his head and find Shiro brushing the tip of an ear with his lips. Shiro had always done that, un-self-conscious about it. Keith had missed it with something like despair.

After maybe an hour, Shiro turned and his dick brushed Keith's, and they fell into a slower, clumsier rhythm that before. The glancing kisses deepened. Keith snuck a hand down low and found Shiro getting wet again, his pussy still so greedy.

"Again," Shiro said, against Keith's mouth. "You have another condom, right?"

No. He didn't.

He wasn't Lance. He lacked the foresight to plan for marathon sex sessions. Fuck. Or, in this case, _no fuck_.

Shiro must have seen the panic on his face, because he shook his head a bit and began to guide Keith's raw cock back down to his hole.

"It's okay," he told Keith. "You just have to remember to pull out this time, okay?"

Keith nodded. It wasn't -- there were no other options. There could be no waiting. Already the head of his shaft was poking at Shiro's lips and finding them wet again. When he pushed in again, Shiro's pussy walls spasmed around him. Keith lifted Shiro's legs and found an angle that let him pump in hard on the first stroke. In. Out. Shiro made dazed, helpless noises and his hands scrabbled for Keith's shoulders, like he needed something to hold onto. 

"Pull out, right? Pull out when you need to," he managed.

But Keith barely heard him. He plunged into that sweet, soft wetness and felt it raw and clinging around him. It _was_ better like this. Every velvety fold caressed his cock. Every thrust left Shiro's pussy drooling with more need.

"Right," Shiro said. "S'right. _S'right_ , Keith."

Keith thrust into the hilt and then all the way out. Again. Again. He loved the raw feeling of forcing Shiro to open up completely every time. Shiro's pussy loved it too, fucked a little wider now, a little hungrier. Shiro sobbed. 

"Keith," he said, like he needed more. "Keith, _please_."

So Keith thrust in again and let that pussy have his whole dick. Shiro moaned gratefully as Keith fucked him. He began to move again like he was made to milk Keith's cock. When Keith came, Shiro reacted by locking his legs around him. He seemed unable to think. Then Keith remembered belatedly that they couldn't do this, and pulled out despite Shiro's resistance. So some of his come ended up on Shiro's thighs.

But most of it stayed inside Shiro, dribbling out of his spent, red hole. 

It was such a risk. Keith knew it was a risk. Shiro was still breathing hard, but now he was coming to. His lashes fluttered, his eyes went wide with surprise. He jerked forward and cursed, then tried using his flesh hand to get some of Keith's come out. Keith tried to help, crooking a finger inside that little channel and pushing out what he could. 

Even this made Shiro gasp a little.

"We can't -- we shouldn't do it like this again," Shiro said.

But he was moving against Keith's fingers again, like he didn't really want to stop.

Keith didn't really want to stop, either.


	3. Chapter 3

Keith did get better about pulling out in time. A little better. Most days. 

But then came their last night on Arus, fraught from beginning to end. Pidge nearly left, and Lance was hurt, and for days Shiro had blinding migraines, the aftereffects of Sendak's torture. 

The danger felt too close after that, the future too unpredictable. So when they found themselves alone, he and Keith weren't very good about pulling back from their brief pleasure. There continued to be slip-ups.

But by Keith's report, there were only fifteen condoms left in the Castle of Lions. That wouldn't do. Clearly, some had to be reserved for the rest of the team in case -- well. In case Lance woke up and realized his dream of finding an alien race with a high libido and a boundless attraction to him. In fact, at this point he had probably earned that.

And a small part of Shiro didn't want to limit the vaginal sex to just fifteen more rounds. There were other things they could and did do. But Shiro should have dealt with this sensibly from the start, and just asked for help from the two people best equipped to understand strange alien-made extra anatomy.

It was even easy enough to form the words. Short, and to the point:

"I haven't been totally honest with you. The Galra gave me female sexual organs, I'm sleeping with Keith, and unless we get some contraception, I could end up pregnant."

Allura stood in the middle of the kitchen and stared at him, confused. Next to her, Coran twirled his moustache, squinted, and then applied himself to the extremely briny something he was preparing for dinner.

"Hunk was right," he said to himself, after a minute. "Needs more Arus-pepper. Why didn't we pack more Arus-pepper?"

Allura gathered herself.

"It's not like having female sexual organs is such a trial, and I already knew about you and Keith because my mice told me," she said. "They know all secrets. As for pregnancy, I don't see what the problem is? You and Keith must link minds. Just transmit your intent not to breed children, the same way you would link your intentions when piloting Voltron."

She was forgetting that, for the very human paladins, mind linking was completely dependent on their connection to Voltron. It only happened for them when they were thinking of their lions, becoming one with their lions. Shiro wasn't sure he wanted to have sex while a part of him was mentally convinced it was a lion. 

"So," he tried regardless, "Do we do it in the cockpit or something? Does that help?"

Allura flushed a furious lavender-blue, a new and becoming color on her. Coran choked on a sample of his space brine. 

"Shiro!" Allura said. "You are the _black paladin_. You of all people should know that it is highly inappropriate to--"

"Right," Shiro said quickly. "Sorry. You're right. I didn't think."

"The cockpit is for piloting Voltron. Do us the favor of confining your and Keith's leisure activities to the physical pleasure rooms--"

"We have physical pleasure rooms?" Shiro said. 

"Of course," said Coran, as his sputtering died down. "What's a castle without a few -- a few physical pleasure rooms?"

Allura continued, very severe now. 

"Now I suppose none of you is over the age of Altean consent, really--"

"Eighty-nine rock-monsoons," Coran supplied. "Much more reliable than counting maturity in years."

"--so naturally the sexual mind link would be a bit advanced for you. But even as budding young people exploring yourselves, you should have known right away to ask for contraception tech while you learned to build the link!"

"Contraception tech," Shiro repeated obediently. "And we use that how?"

"You install it," Allura said. "It goes right in the--"

She broke off. Shiro waited. 

"In the point of the ear," she said, after a few seconds. 

"Oh," Shiro said. "Really?"

"Well, why do you think we have ear points?" Coran said. "Emergency contraception for the sexually-inexperienced. It's not just because it makes us infinitely better looking than you. Though, I mean, that does help."

By now Allura was looking very frustrated with the whole thing. 

"I appreciate your candor in this," she told Shiro. "But perhaps I am not the best person to -- to --"

Coran rallied to her side. 

"I'll advise him, princess," he said. "I've seen plenty of strange downstairs getups, and never a single one we couldn't keep infertile when the time called. I didn't spend my ninety-first rock-monsoon interning in the brothel of elder moon yaks for nothing." 

This seemed to satisfy Allura, though Shiro could have done without hearing it. Allura swept out of the room. Coran put down his brine spoon and put a comforting hand on Shiro's shoulder. 

"Let's start with the basics," he said. "I've seen what goes on down there for most of you. Had to see it with Lance when we put him into the healing pod. It all makes me think, well, that's a bit incomplete and thoroughly funny to look at, but--"

"Like I said, I just need some contraception," Shiro said desperately. 

"I'm getting there," said Coran. "Let's slow down and make sure we've got the basics covered first."

He beamed at Shiro. Shiro's mind flashed to one of his Garrison orientation officers, a cheerful woman who'd covered everything from first year dormitory assignments to sex ed. She'd been prepared to make six score cadets much more knowledgeable about the topic, with little care for how she terrified them in the process. Videos of screaming women giving birth while she lectured on venereal diseases had played a big part. 

Shiro hoped Coran wasn't planning on showing him anything like that.

"Now," Coran began. "When it comes to sentient beings, you have your sexual species, and your asexual species, and your cannibalizing reproduction species, and your--"

" _What_?"

"You're right. Too broad. We'll stick to the sexual species for right now. Probably you humans have different terms for it, but when a species is like the Alteans, we call that species a Sexually Telepathic species. For the obvious reason that to limit the birth rate during times of intense overpopulation, such species do as the protective intergalactic lions of old taught us. We perform a simple sexual mind link that solves the whole thing."

Shiro considered the possibility that thousands of years ago the Alteans had learned sexy mind tricks from intergalactic lions. He decided that this was fine and pretty much exactly what he'd expect from the Alteans. He nodded.

"Right. Got that."

"You humans," Coran continued, "are not a Sexually Telepathic species, clearly. Not a bunch of intergalactic lions, if you will. So you must be more like the elder moon yaks. Very fortunate. Sexiest species in the galaxy, the elder moon yaks!"

"Do I have to hear about the moon yaks?" Shiro asked. 

Coran frowned. "I'll confine myself to what's relevant," he said, like Shiro was denying him a great pleasure.

"Good," Shiro managed. "Thank you."

"Scientifically, the elder moon yaks, like most telepathically-disinclined sexual species, are classified as a Varietal Gametogenesis species. And that just means that your goop or eggs or any other gametes you might have come in different varieties! And that's what I call lucky!"

Again he beamed, though Shiro's brain was trying to catch up and so he failed to beam back.

"Different varieties? Of eggs? And...and sperm?"

"What's sperm?" Coran said. "I'm talking about your old gamete juice! And Keith's! He should be able to make it come in rich and potent as yak cream, or as limp and infertile as meteor water! It's like a spigot with two settings, isn't it? Or more! More settings! More spigots! Some species do have more spigots and settings."

"What?" Shiro said. "He-- We can't do that."

"Of course you can," Coran said encouragingly. "Why, there's hardly a single non-telepathic sexual species that _can't_ de-power the gametes when they need to."

"We can't do the spigot thing," Shiro repeated. "Humans can't do that."

"You're very young," Coran said, waving a hand. "Your council of sexual scribes probably hadn't thought to educate you yet on how to do it, that's all. Waiting until you both had a few more rock-monsoons under your belt, was that it?"

"We're human adults and our sex ed teacher didn't cover it, because _humans can't do that_."

It was Coran's turn to look completely befuddled.

"You mean you're like--"

"Don't say it," Shiro begged, somehow knowing what was coming next.

"--a pack of _Yelmores_?"

"No," Shiro said. "Yes. I don't know. Sometimes we're born infertile. Usually we're not. But either way we can't control it like that. If the Yelmores can't do it, then neither can we."

"Yes, but Yelmores are animals," Coran argued. "I'm talking about fully sentient species. Most of the higher-order galactic beings can mind link to go infertile, or else just -- just turn it off individually, on the biological level. That's the only other option. Otherwise, you get together for pleasure only to savagely pop babies out all over the place!"

Maybe there had been Altean childbirth videos and Coran had been forced to sit through them at some point, and they'd been just as mildly traumatizing as the human equivalent.

"Obviously humans are unique in this way," Shiro said, a little helplessly. 

Coran frowned.

"Well, no," he said. "Not unique. There's one other sentient species that does..."

He went quiet. Suddenly all his attention was back on the space brine.

"What?" Shiro asked.

Coran made an apologetic face. 

"The Galra," he said. "It is one more thing that sets them apart. Large numbers, the Galra, because they can't control it the way most other species can, not with sexual telepathy or with biological adjustment. And if they can keep taking planets from others, it doesn't matter, does it? So it informs the whole culture, really. Lots of babies. They let the weak die early, because there are always plenty strong left over."

Thoughtfully, he added, "And, you know, the mind linking for us telepathic species -- it goes both ways. We can mind link to make children if we choose, even with non-Alteans. And even the elder moon yaks have some species they're compatible with, because one spigot setting will go nicely with another. But the Galra can only breed with the Galra. Or at least, that's always been the conventional wisdom about them."

Something occurred to Shiro. 

"Do you think--" he began. It was difficult to get it out for some reason. Purple walls again, and this time a massive Galra standing over him, displaying snarling joy.

"Shiro?" Coran said, concerned.

"Do you think they figured out that humans -- that I'm -- like that too? Do you think that's why they changed me?"

"I couldn't begin to guess at Galra thinking," Coran said carefully. "There was a time I thought I could, but I was wrong about that. It does make some sense, though."

Shiro breathed out hard. Suddenly he wished he could get rid of it all, tear it off. The scars, the arm. Everything down there.

Coran guided him to a chair and pushed him down gently until he was sitting.

"Maybe there's a bright side," Coran said, though there clearly wasn't. "We'd wondered why the Galra hadn't gone back to destroy your Earth. Maybe this is why. If they can breed with your kind and get strong offspring, you're valuable to them. That buys you all some time. That's more than what the rest of the universe gets from the Galra."

Shiro knew that, and yet it didn't comfort him. Were the Galra silently abducting humans? Altering more of them? Or did they want to get him back first, to see if their theories about stronger offspring would hold? Were they -- had they moved on to doing this to the Holts?

Coran's hand was on his shoulder, steadying him. It took him a few minutes to realize that, though. First he had to stop feeling like his skin was crawling, like nothing about the universe was safe.

"You can't worry about their plans for all humanity, Shiro," Coran said gently. "That won't do anything. All the worries will do is hurt you, not the Galra."

Shiro nodded. Coran was right. But Shiro couldn't seem to turn his brain off, couldn't get these recurring shadows to stop playing at the corners of his mind. 

It made him want Keith right now. Something about Keith soothed this. Didn't cure it, not really. But Keith's passionate quiet helped a lot. The whole team helped, but Keith was the one who knew him the best, and the one Shiro wanted most from. 

He found Keith facing down three training robots and watched him until he was done. Keith caught sight of him halfway through. He didn't stop fighting, so Shiro just waved rather than jump in and ruin his routine. Keith would let him know if he wanted assistance. Keith was precise and impossibly graceful when he fought, and Shiro suspected he was the one who'd most improved at hand-to-hand like this. Certainly Keith was the fastest on the team, and the best at close combat. When he fought like this, it warmed something in Shiro. He had faith that whatever came, Keith would be alright. That Keith was more than Keith knew; that Keith was every bit the kind of protector the paladins were supposed to be.

Keith wasn't large or especially intimidating, but he was strong, and Shiro loved to see him in his element like this. Fearless. 

When he finished he came and sat by Shiro, wiping the sweat from his brow. Shiro had the urge to do it for him but restrained himself. They were old friends. They had sex. Somehow a gesture that intimate seemed a step too far. He didn't want to make Keith uncomfortable. 

"Did they help?" Keith asked. 

"Not really. Did you know we have physical pleasure rooms?"

"Are those the ones with all the chains in the wall and swings and those benches that look like elephants?"

"Elephants?" 

"There's a trunk," Keith said. "Lance thinks that if anybody touches it it'll go slimy like a tentacle."

They thought about this for a moment. Lance was probably right. 

Then they locked gazes and silently confirmed it: neither of them was Lance, and so neither of them was even going to pretend to be up for elephant tentacle sex benches. Yes, Shiro had a working vagina tucked behind his cock now; and yes, they both liked it when Keith went ahead and made the most of that. But aside from that, what they were doing felt completely normal. They could probably keep doing it in a normal room. 

It was only when they were back in Shiro's room, half-naked, that Shiro realized he didn't question that they were going to keep doing it. Or at least he wanted to keep doing it, despite the risk. 

He was so tired of the anxiety, the numbness that came when he thought of his body, the flashbacks. Feeling unsafe. Part of it was that he'd been changed in this way, pieces hacked off and replaced, organs re-formed. Keith took some of that and made it feel so unexpectedly good. Shiro knew they should stop, but how could he? Keith even liked fucking him down there, even if all it was was another broken piece, courtesy of the Galra. 

Nothing about Shiro was whole or good anymore. But Keith could still make him feel like he was. 

Now Keith sat on the bed and looked up at him expectantly.

"I have an idea," Shiro said.

He pulled off his pants and straddled Keith, sinking down to rub against Keith's cock. Keith was half-hard to start and as Shiro rubbed against him, Keith's dick firmed up even more. It felt hot and huge against Shiro's sensitive pussy. Shiro's mouth watered, thinking of sinking onto that. He loved the way Keith stretched him and fucked him open, reducing all his worries to simple, desperate need.

Now Keith guided him with one hand and with the other applied himself to Shiro's cock, rubbing off a few heavenly strokes. It made Shiro wet in minutes. He was so hungry to have Keith's dick inside him that he reached down a hand and guided Keith to his opening, letting the head part his outer lips. He pushed down and then Keith was sliding in him, filling him up. 

Shiro's entire mind narrowed to the feeling of that huge cock rubbing his walls. The painful stretch warred with dizzying pleasure. He fucked himself on Keith, clumsy at first, but soon getting the rhythm of it. He lowered himself until he was fully impaled and clenching with pleasure, then lifted himself off a bit, whimpering, ready to repeat the process. It hurt a little to force himself down absolutely, but if he did it right he could feel the head of Keith's dick smack his cervix. There was rough hurt to it, but it was so right. His pussy walls fluttered tight around Keith. He was seeping wetness, grunting in time as he fucked himself on Keith's dick.

"Shiro," Keith managed. His pupils were blown, his long lashes wet. "Oh my god, Shiro." He guided Shiro by the hips, nails digging half-moons into Shiro's skin. 

"Let me know-- let me know when you're close," Shiro said, between gasps. 

Riding Keith like this was making his head spin. From this angle Keith's cock seemed to fill him absolutely. He could feel his pussy cling to it, needy for it. It rubbed along that spot that made Shiro gasp and Shiro's pussy spasmed, the pressure breaking. And Keith's hands were pushing him down further, until Shiro could only think of the dick spearing him deep. He was made for this, fucked raw, desperate for more. 

"Shiro," Keith said, loosening his hold on Shiro's hips. "Now."

But Shiro was too strung out. Keith's dick was rubbing against his walls, thrusting so deep. For a moment it felt so big that it was the only thing in Shiro's world, a hot, firm shaft that split him wide. Then he felt it jerk. Keith shuddered against him. Shiro felt him coming. It was a warm, generous mess. Shiro cursed and clumsily climbed off, but the damage was done. Come dripped out of his hole alongside Keith's dick. 

"Sorry," he said, flushing with humiliation. "Keith. I'm sorry. I thought--"

Keith shook his head once, more like he was clearing it than disagreeing about anything. He jerked his cock once, twice, until he was completely spent, then pushed himself off the berth and onto his knees. 

"I'll clean you off," he said. He helped Shiro onto the berth and took Shiro's still-hard dick in hand, jerking it lazily as he applied his mouth to Shiro's pussy. It was swollen and fucked open now, with Keith's come still oozing out messily. Keith didn't seem to mind. He licked the folds clean. Then he gave wet sucks to the tender, drenched opening. 

It was overwhelming. Shiro felt another orgasm building, a double-orgasm, pussy clenching and balls tightening at once. He sobbed a little as he came, unable to help himself.

Keith kept licking. He pushed two fingers inside Shiro and Shiro's hole fluttered around them, sloshing with come.

Still wanting more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coran's alien sex explanation is complete mumbo-jumbo, but of course _we_ would think that, because we're not lucky enough to be Sexually Telepathic.


	4. Chapter 4

Shiro must've won over all of the other paladins, because the day after they left the reborn Balmera Keith found a condom pyramid stacked on the ledge next to his berth. 

"All I'm saying," came Lance's voice from just outside the door, "is that he'd better appreciate it."

"Shhh," Hunk replied. "He's sleeping! Wrapped up tight like a little Keith croquette. A Keith-kette, if you will."

And then, surprisingly, Allura chimed in: "What I don't understand is how you can just wrap what looks like flimsy bugpaper around it and call it a day. The force of most species' lovemaking would eradicate those things in less than two tics."

"Well," Lance said. "If, hypothetically, for science, I took one for a test drive, and--"

"God no," Allura said.

"Plus," Keith said, opening the door. "You gave them all to me. I think. Thanks?"

"Keith-kette!" Hunk said, smiling. All three of them were sitting in the hall outside his room for some reason. Things like this were happening more often, the team lazing around together in their off-hours. It felt strange to Keith. They were here to fight. Not to socialize and give each other condom-presents. Fighting was something he knew how to do. Socializing, less so.

Particularly with Allura. It was a shock to see her sitting there. Keith had assumed that she would need her rest after rejuvenating the Balmera. And anyway she was even less prone to fraternizing than Keith was. If she wasn't communing with King Alfor's hologram, she was directing the Castle and making high-level Destroy-the-Galra plans. So it was somewhat uncomfortable to find out that she was in on the whole condom gifting thing. Keith had always assumed she wouldn't involve herself in paladin matters that didn't have to do with forming Voltron.

"Princess?" he said now.

"Listen, Keith. If Shiro gets pregnant, then you may not be able to form Voltron!"

Ah.

Lance scratched his chin.

"Really?" he said. "Why not?"

"Dude, pregnancy means babies, and babies don't mean battles," Hunk said. "They're so teeny-tiny, first of all. And squishy! And they need you to love them and definitely to keep them away from Galra cannon fire for, like, at least the first twelve or thirteen years of their lives."

"That long? Human babies sound very peculiar," Allura noted. "Anyway, it's not just that. Babies make the lions absolutely -- absolutely-- well. Trust me, you don't want to see the lions when their paladins get pregnant!"

"Why? What do they do?" Lance asked curiously.

"And," Hunk was saying, "babies cry, and poop a lot, and need to be fed like every hour--"

"So do you!" said Lance.

"Babies make the lions think of packs and families," Allura said darkly. "Babies make the lions not want to let their paladins fight!"

"Really?" Lance said. "You mean that this whole time, to defeat Voltron, Zarkon just had to throw some babies at us?"

"And then the babies start walking," Hunk was still saying, "and oh boy are they trouble when they start walking, and then when they're talking--"

"I don't," Keith said, very even and clear about it, "I don't want to talk about babies."

He closed the door in their faces. He retreated into his berth. He thought extremely panicky thoughts.

Babies.

He'd known plenty. Both the kind that got adopted fast, and the latter kind, the Keith-kind, that aged up on their own and stopped being loud and needy for affection because pretty soon they realized that they weren't going to get it. Babies. Not very smart. Full of poop. And, primarily, the kind of thing people usually only wanted when they were looking to start a family. 

Did Shiro want a family? He seemed like the kind of person who should. But then maybe he was like Keith. Maybe he would prefer to do what the team needed, what the universe needed. They were more useful as Voltron paladins than they would ever be as the parents to some wailing, poopy infant. Plus Keith didn't think he'd be very good for an infant. He could take care of himself and he wanted to look out for the team in the best way he could. But he didn't think he had it in him to nurture anything. 

So why did the thought of knocking Shiro up, even accidentally, please him so much? Why did he like that risk, that thrill? The logical result was babies, something he definitely didn't want, and yet on some level he did want it. He wanted to coat Shiro's insides with his come, and he liked the thought that it could have lasting effects. Shiro growing heavy. Showing off what they'd done. 

What was wrong with him?

There was a knock at the door. Then Hunk said, "Knock-knock!" Then both he and Lance shouldered their way in, which defeated the purpose of knocking or saying that. Lance plopped down to Keith's right, Hunk to Keith's left. One of Lance's long arms wound around Keith's shoulder, like the leg of a casual spider. Hunk's arm, by contrast, tugged at Keith's midsection and pulled them all in closer together. Hunk was a hugger. Again Keith considered running away. He could never figure out how to respond to this kind of thing. There was always an anxious sense that the team might want him to touch them back. 

"Okay, real talk," Lance announced. "This team dynamic is out of whack, and I'm gonna put it out there, it's because of the you and Shiro sex thing."

"We scared you back there with the baby stuff, huh, buddy?" said Hunk. 

Lance said, "And look, Keith, I know how it is. Sometimes you meet somebody and you want a sex thing--"

Hunk said, "I get it. Kind of frightening to think of the glories and wonders of being a dad."

Keith could never figure out how they always managed to launch completely different conversations and yet still feel so totally in sync. The only person he could ever seem to do that with was Shiro. 

"But this has kind of changed my opinion of Shiro a little. Like, I thought he'd have better taste. But now this means you have awesome taste and I wanna like high five you--"

"I bet babies make your stomach queasy," Hunk said knowingly. "A little bit, because you think about how you want to protect them and how you're going to have to be their role model, and if you've never even met any babies before--"

"I've met babies," Keith said. "And-- wait. High-five me?"

Lance held up his other hand.

"Up top," he said, nodding. "You've got Shiro totally head over heels, man. _Shiro_."

"What?"

"Oh, he was all like, 'I'm sorry, guys, but Keith and I are doing the deed,'" Hunk confirmed. "But it was more like: 'Sorry guys, but I'm _not_ sorry 'bout it. You can all just deal.'"

"I'm still hanging," Lance said, waving his dangling hand. "Don't leave me hanging."

Keith briefly tapped his palm to Lance's. He wasn't really high-fiving the fact that he was sleeping with Shiro. He was high-fiving the idea that Shiro had been serious, when he'd said that he wouldn't break if off just because one of the other paladins might have a problem with it. He knew Shiro wasn't a liar, but a part of Keith had refused to believe that he had been telling the truth.

He still felt the need to protest a little.

"He isn't head over heels for me," he said. "It's just that, before he left for Kerberos, we were friends with benefits. Like you said: just a sex thing."

"He really didn't sound like he thought it was just a sex thing when he was talking to me," Hunk said.

"Well, that's the point," Lance said. "It can't be just a sex thing, because he's like, team leader, and now he has this special thing with Keith that makes Keith his -- his special thing! What are we supposed to do with that?"

"It doesn't have to be any of your business," Keith pointed out.

"True, true," Hunk said. "But. What if you guys developed relationship problems? And then we felt them through the Voltron bond and you guys were all sad and in love but sad about it? Or not in love and sad about that? I'd be sad, too. I'd get really sad."

"And where does this leave you and me?" Lance said, making furious motions with his hands. Motions at Keith. Then motions at Lance. Then motions back at Keith. "Where does this leave us, Keith?"

"Nowhere?" Keith offered. 

"Don't think like that," Lance insisted. "I'm your rival. You're my rival. That's our thing. That's who we are. I won't let something like this change what we have, man!"

"Me neither," Hunk put in, before Keith could respond to this bizarre declaration. "I mean, I'm not your rival. More like your friend. And Shiro's friend. And it was weird for a bit but the more I think about the more it's like, maybe we all have to be cool about it."

"Which I am!" Lance said. "So cool! I gave you all my condoms. Like, no offense, but those are the actions of a seriously cool rival."

Keith looked from one to the other. Since they'd learned about him and Shiro, they hadn't really talked to him about it. He'd assumed that they were weirded out and needed to be talked around until they were comfortable with it. But now they were acting like the person who needed to be comforted was _him_.

"Thanks," he said eventually. "That means a lot."

Hunk beamed. Lance flashed a thumbs up.

And, mostly to convince himself, Keith added, "I mean, I really don't want babies."

Not technically. Not for their own sake. He didn't want to show off how badly suited he was to raising any kind of family, he didn't want to make their lions go overprotective, and he didn't want to throw off the team dynamic any more than he already had. 

So why did the news that Shiro had defended this just make him want to knock Shiro up _more_?

Gingerly, he extricated himself from Hunk's arms and Lance's arm and the whole Hunk-Lance-friendship pile thing. He felt like a fake. Here they were, trying to help, and all it did was make him feel territorial. 

_I'm super glad you guys are fine with this. The condoms are really nice. But the thing is, I really want to fuck him raw until he's_ full-up _with kids._

He didn't say that. Instead he scooped up the condoms and said, "I should tell Shiro. Thanks," and made his escape. He felt jittery. He considered shoving the condoms in an airlock. He considered how completely insane that thought was. He wasn't actually looking for Shiro, but his legs propelled him to the infirmary and there Shiro was, dressed in Altean medical whites, talking low to Coran.

"Just the man we wanted to see," Coran said. "Why don't you tell him your theory, Shiro?"

"Theory?" Keith said. 

Shiro frowned. "I actually wanted to be sure before I said anything. I didn't want to get your hopes up."

"Shiro has been thinking through the changes in his body," Coran said. 

Shiro nodded. He wasn't looking at Keith now, which Keith found strange, because Shiro never avoided anyone's gaze. Shiro had never been the kind of person who would have a reason to. 

But after a minute he straightened and met Keith's eyes. 

He said. "We can probably bet that my womb's been designed to breed with Galra. Coran's been running some tests that seem to show that it has been. What we don't know is whether I'm compatible with humans. I know I'm fertile. But maybe, for the purposes of you and me, I'm not."

"Oh," Keith said. 

So it was all moot. So probably he couldn't get Shiro knocked up at all. That was a good thing. Great, even. 

But he didn't feel great. A part of him felt savagely disappointed.

"It'll take me about a week to compare his Galra gametes against his human gametes to see if they're compatible," Coran said now. 

"His human--" Keith began. "You mean you're just testing it against yourself? Why didn't you ask for my gametes?"

He didn't know why that was important, except that it was. To the others, Shiro seemed to have communicated that this wasn't just friends with benefits, that this wasn't casual. But if it wasn't, then why hadn't Shiro come to him for help?

"I didn't want to bother you with this," Shiro said. "You shouldn't have to worry about what the Galra did to me. That's my problem."

"How could I not worry?" Keith bit out, before he even realized what he was saying.

"I just didn't want to make you think about it if you didn't want to," Shiro said.

"Keith's got a point, though," Coran said. "We're testing your male gametes against your female ones. But if they gave you the female gametes in the first place, who's to say they didn't modify the male ones? We should be testing you against someone we know is fully human."

Shiro went pale. When he next spoke, his voice was too loud, angrier than Keith had ever heard it.

"We don't know that they did that!" he said. "We don't--there's no _proof_ that they changed me any more than this. There's no reason to--"

Coran stepped back and held out his hands placatingly.

"Shiro, calm down. Of course we don't know. That's why it would be helpful to test you against someone else."

This was enough to quiet Shiro, but not enough to immediately calm him. He sat tense, looking at them like they were a threat. Coran looked to Keith and made a series of befuddled gestures, like he wasn't sure what to do.

Keith didn't know what to do either. Keith just felt ashamed. 

This was how Shiro reacted to the thought of what the Galra had done to him. With anger. With horror. How much worse would it be if he got pregnant? Keith had fantasized about Shiro with a gravid belly, but what would it do to Shiro to carry around more physical proof of the Galra's handiwork? What was it doing to Shiro right now?

He couldn't tell Shiro that it was alright, because it wasn't. So he said the only good thing he could say instead.

"You're still you, even if they changed you," Keith told him. "Okay, Shiro? You're still you."

Shiro didn't look like he believed it.

"Shiro," Coran began, but Keith stopped him.

"I'll talk to him," he said. "Give us a minute, okay?"

Coran nodded. 

"A minute. That's about five thousand tics, right?"

Keith didn't correct him. Coran left. It took maybe twenty tics after that for Shiro's breath to even out and for Shiro to stop looking so hunted. He buried his head in his hands and said, "I'm sorry, Keith. I don't know what that was."

Keith sat down next to him. He didn't fully know either, but he didn't want to leave Shiro. There was only about a hand's span between them but it felt like too much space. If Keith were more like Hunk or Lance, he could cross it more easily and throw an arm around Shiro. But he couldn't pull off something that casually friendly, not even with his closest friend.

"It's still you, no matter what they changed," Keith repeated.

Shiro forced out a breath.

"I want to believe that," he said after a minute, "but who knows? They could have made me more Galra than human."

"If you were a two-foot tall Arussian, you'd still be Shiro," Keith said shortly. "And that's all any of us wants. You. No matter what they did to your body."

Shiro looked at him. Then he closed the distance between them. He kissed Keith hungrily and Keith kissed back, just as desperate. He was torn up inside with how badly he wanted Shiro and how _bad_ he was about it, always measuring this Shiro against the old, or against the thought of some pregnant, needy Shiro who couldn't happen.

But when he was with Shiro, things became clear. Just this Shiro was enough, no matter what he was.

And what he was, at this moment, was insistent. His hands pulled back Keith's jacket and undid his pants, and Keith returned the favor by applying himself to pulling down those medical whites. 

"Gonna get on top of me again?" Keith whispered into his mouth.

He'd liked that. He'd liked guiding Shiro by the hips as Shiro writhed and gasped and fucked himself on his cock, that slippery pussy clenching around Keith. He wanted to do that again. He wanted Shiro bouncing on his dick.

But now Shiro shook his head. "I'm still embarrassed about that," he admitted. "I thought it would be easier if I just--"

"It isn't easy to pull out of you," Keith murmured. His hands found Shiro's pussy and applied themselves. Today the folds looked plump and gorgeous, begging to be fondled. Keith obliged, rubbing along the soft lips and up to the clit. Objective: to get Shiro wet, and fast. Objective soon accomplished. Shiro seemed to drip for him faster and faster these days, either because Keith was getting better at knowing what his pussy needed or else because his pussy was getting hungrier and hungrier to be filled.

"I have an idea," Shiro said, panting a little. He was actively trying to fuck against Keith's fingers. Keith found his opening and slipped a finger in. He was rewarded with a moan and the feeling of Shiro's walls already clenching tight around him. Keith was only buried up to the knuckle but it was enough to flush Shiro's lips red with blood. What a needy pussy. What a perfect, perfect pussy. 

Still, Keith added, "If you're having ideas right now, then I'm not doing this right."

"You'll like it," Shiro said. He pulled off of Keith, gasping and shaking his head like he needed to clear it. He turned around. Then he guided Keith's cock between his legs. He pushed back until the head was positioned against the warm, soft skin of his vagina and Keith's balls were slapping his ass.

Something in Keith _reacted_. Even if he couldn't see Shiro's gorgeous pussy from this angle, everything about this was still exactly what he wanted. Shiro felt somehow more vulnerable from behind, and without thinking Keith wrapped his arms around him and rubbed his cock against those folds until it was completely soaked in Shiro's juices. He loved this messy wetness. He loved that Shiro's pussy was all too eager to lubricate him, drooling all over his cock. He worked his cock in spirals along those hot, soft lips, letting it prod occasionally at Shiro's clit without every penetrating the hole. Shiro kept gasping and fucking back against him in response. 

"Move forward," Shiro begged. "Against those steps by the healing pods."

He didn't seem able to take any steps on his own, didn't seem capable of moving away from Keith's dick. So Keith guided them, pushing Shiro from behind. Every clumsy step let his cock rub and slip against Shiro, glancing by that hungry hole. By the time they made it to the steps, Shiro was whimpering a bit. He turned his head like he wanted to say something, but then Keith's dick rubbed his clit again and he moaned. Keith stuck two fingers in his mouth and he sucked them right away, like all of him was hungry.

"You had an idea," Keith prompted.

Shiro nodded. He looked dazed with need. 

"Down," he managed. "I've got to get--"

He moved away. Keith's dick bobbed free. Keith was briefly disappointed. But then Shiro was on his hands and knees, steadying himself against the steps and spreading his legs apart. His ass arched up. He presented his pussy to Keith.

Keith had rubbed him enough that by now that it wasn't the chaste little slit it usually was. The folds were worked apart, and Shiro's clit stood completely at attention. A little slick of pussy-wet oozed out of him, pooling on the floor. Shiro was exposed, his raw vagina begging for it. Keith let his cock rest against that pussy for a few minutes and marveled at how Shiro's lips seemed to flutter in anticipation. Keith's dick looked huge against the opening. 

Keith pushed in. He watched the tiny hole stretch and stretch around his dick. It was so hot and tight and yet impossibly willing, letting Keith fuck in smoothly despite the tightness. Keith slid in all the way until he encountered that little ring of tissue inside and his balls slapped Shiro's clit. Shiro sobbed Keith's name, desperate. 

"Shhh," Keith said. He grabbed Shiro's hips to steady himself and then began to fuck in earnest, feeling Shiro clench around him. Keith didn't care what the Galra had done to him. This was Shiro, _his_ Shiro, with his pussy arching hungrily back to prove it. 

Neither of them had even once mentioned that Keith should pull out. Neither of them said it now. Keith had just been thinking of what it could do to Shiro to get pregnant, but now, for some reason, the risk didn't even occur to him. He was lost in how good it felt to fuck Shiro like this, like an animal, with Shiro panting his need. 

Shiro shifted his weight to his metal arm and began to use his flesh arm to stroke his own cock in time to Keith's thrusts. His whole body obeyed the rhythm Keith set. To reward him, Keith snuck a hand down and thumbed his clit. He could feel Shiro tighten even more in response, coming from his dick and his pussy at once. He made sounds like he was wrecked, like Keith was wrecking him with the pleasure. 

As Shiro's orgasms subsided, Keith kept fucking him. Hard and fast, drawing those little grunts and whimpers out of Shiro. It built until he was shooting his load deep inside, right up against that little internal ring. Come oozed out alongside his dick when he pulled it out. Shiro's pussy was full to the brim with it, messy and thick, marked as Keith's.

Three tics passed. 

Then Keith said, " _Shit!_ " Mortified. Horrified at himself. 

Shiro had gone limp, panting against the steps. There was no fight in him. When he turned to look at Keith, he looked strangely peaceful. 

"It's okay," he said, softly. "I just -- I have this feeling it's okay."

Like he was trying to salvage one good thing from the Galra, this promise that he and Keith could do this without any risk. But Keith still felt like it was a risk. Keith still felt like he should feel guilty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen, Keith, you probably feel guilty because you were carrying around like fifteen condoms and you didn't even think to mention it.


	5. Chapter 5

The night the Castle turned against them, Shiro got rid of Sendak. 

He had to do it. Sendak was a danger. But even after Sendak was gone, Shiro felt unsafe. He might be less human than he thought. More broken. No, there was no 'more' broken. You'd either broken or you hadn't, and Shiro knew what category he fell into. Zarkon had already defeated him. That was written on his body, in the blood that pooled between his thighs once a month, in the sticky wanting he suffered when he looked at Keith. He'd been trying so hard to pretend that he could make something good out of all this.

He didn't think he could. 

Even suspecting that Keith couldn't get him pregnant didn't feel like a victory. It should have. He didn't think Keith wanted a family. And at best, getting pregnant would only distract from their mission to defeat Zarkon and the Galra. 

But parts of him were Galra. Galra-made, engineered for Galra purposes. His arm was a more vicious weapon than the others realized, meant to conquer and destroy. And as for his the rest of him--

After Coran had asked him to change into medical whites, he'd raised a long metal platform from the floor. 

"Hop right up here and let the extractor do its work," he'd said cheerfully. "And we'll have some egg samples out in two tics."

But a memory battered at his mind the second he was lying down. 

Two hooded Galra. 

_We'll see what these slaves make of their champion when he's like any other dam, begging on his hands and knees to be bred._

That was how the Galra did it. Rough. Like animals. The moment he'd ended up on an examining table again, he'd remembered the taunts of their druids, telling him that soon enough he would want to be taken that way.

And the moment Coran had suggested that he was even more Galra than he thought, he'd wanted _Keith_ to take him that way.

His friend. Loyal. Quietly wild. The best pilot he'd ever known. If anyone was going to take him on his hands and knees, it was going to be Keith. He'd shared midnight desert races and furtive kisses and now paladinship with Keith. If he was made to breed, then it was Keith he wanted to breed with. 

He hadn't even cared that Keith had come inside him that last time.

 _Make it you,_ he'd thought desperately. _Make it yours._

Even though a child wouldn't make things better. He had no right to bring a child into this ten-thousand-year fight. Some days, he wondered if he had any right to let his teammates stay in it, though he knew that they'd all made the choice for themselves. Shiro had spent a year as an arena-slave, unable to make his own choices. He would never override theirs.

But they faced the most powerful, vicious empire in the universe. There was constant danger in that. Shiro couldn't throw that on yet another person, especially a child. 

Still, when he couldn't sleep at night he'd walk to the hangar and stare at the stars, feeling along his lower abdomen with his metal arm. Galra tech, inside and out. Destructive. Insidious. But there was little harm in letting his exhausted mind drift into fantasy. Fucking himself on Keith's dick, or Keith thrusting into him. Feeling full on Keith's come. Unable to keep it from taking, implanting inside him so that his belly grew heavy and his chest grew swollen. There was a fascinated fear when he considered it, but there was want there too. His body would change again, and again he'd be helpless to stop it. But the end result would be a child. His and Keith's. Something innocent, something pure.

That was the fantasy: the idea that anything like that could come from what Shiro had experienced, what Shiro was now. If he sat between the dormant lions in the hangar and stared hard enough at the inky black outside the ship, he could almost believe it. 

"Even though I got this from the Galra," he said to himself, pressing down on his stomach. "It would be -- it could be -- _good_."

But the stars didn't answer and neither did the lions. His words sounded hollow. He didn't believe in them. He buried his head in his hands.

"Dream on, Shiro," he muttered. "Nothing good comes from the Galra."

"Hey!" came an indignant voice from behind him. "That's not true!"

Pidge. He hadn't even realized she was here too, but he should have. She worked so ceaselessly on modifying the Green Lion that some nights she fell asleep in it. Now she tumbled out of it, blearily rubbing at her eyes.

"That's not true," she said again. "Rover was good."

"Rover?"

Pidge looked at him like he was offending her. Right. The Galra drone.

"Pidge," he said gently. "They obviously used it to get into the Castle of Lions."

Pidge flushed.

"And then it saved my life!" she said. "Multiple times!"

But Shiro could bet it had only done that because she had reprogrammed it. When Pidge turned her attention to technology, she could work wonders. Still, he didn't want to argue with her.

"My mistake," he told her. "You should get some rest."

Pidge yawned and nodded, but didn't turn to go. She said, sleepy-but-confident, "Do you want me to work on your arm? See if I can figure it out?"

Nausea assaulted him. He was in the arena. There was an alien in front of him with a spongy cranium and waving worms for fingers. Even though it wasn't human, he could tell it was terrified. The guards prodded it forwards. He tried to lunge in front, to take its place. His new arm _burned_. The pain wasn't just in his body: stump, shoulders, and side. It seared across his mind, too, a shock collar on his brain. The guards laughed.

_Do you like the modifications on that, Champion? Now you'll have to wait your turn._

"Don't touch the arm."

His voice was so harsh that he barely recognized it. It didn't sound like him. He didn't want to use a tone like that with Pidge. But he had to warn her away from his arm. It was Galra-made; it couldn't be safe. So he didn't want Pidge messing around with it and hurting herself. He owed her better than that.

He tried again, more even this time:

"It isn't just tech. They used some kind of magic to make it, too."

"That's the best kind of tech," Pidge said, waving a hand at the magical-technological castle around them.

He shook his head. 

"It's working fine for now," he said. "Let's not mess around with it."

Pidge made a face. She said, "It's cool, you know. Your arm. It's a robot arm. And you're making something good out of it. I mean, you use it to fight against the Galra and help people."

He shrugged. He couldn't get his old arm back. So making this one useful was his only option. 

He waved her off to bed again and this time she went. He hoped that she could put the conversation out of her mind and not ask about his arm again. Even if it were safe to tinker with his arm, that wouldn't really solve his other problems.

Though Pidge probably didn't know about the other changes. He hadn't explained his new sexual organs to her. Lance, who was both talkative and sexually imaginative, had managed to get the information out of him. And he thought maybe Lance had told Hunk. But Pidge remained ignorant, which was for the best. He didn't want her worrying that the Galra had done this to her father or brother, too. Bad enough for him to carry that worry.

Restless, he left the hangar and walked the Castle of Lions, letting his feet lead him. Eventually he found himself in Coran's lab. It was a bright room with many whirring monitors. One displayed the progress of Coran's tests on Shiro.

Keith sat slumped in front of it, on one of the huge, cushion-bedecked poufs that Alteans used as sofas. He looked like he was dozing, but when Shiro approached he cracked an eye open.

"Hey," he said quietly. 

Shiro took in the slight circles under his eyes. He sat next to him and pulled Keith close. In the days before Kerberos, he'd liked touching Keith like this, warm and open. It had been a risk, but a friendly one. Keith had seemed to need friendly touches and hadn't seemed to know how to ask for them. Tonight, though, he wasn't doing this just for Keith. Tonight he needed this himself.

"You can sleep if you want," he told Keith. "I'll watch these things."

A databank of symbols on the left, which Coran had said represented his egg sample. Three gauges: black, red, sickly lavender. His sperm, Keith's, and a Galra sample that had been frozen for ten-thousand-plus years. Only the Galra gauge showed full compatibility, so Coran's tech was clearly still running tests on the other two sperm samples.

There was still a chance that he and Keith were compatible. Still a chance he could get pregnant. His hand reached for his stomach again. Oddly, so did Keith's. Shiro stared at him. Keith's gaze was unreadable. His hand snuck up and rubbed along Shiro's lower lip. Shiro opened his mouth instinctively and then Keith's fingers were in his mouth. 

He sucked them. He thought about how good these fingers could feel, lower down. His pussy went damp.

Keith pulled his fingers out and reached for a condom. Shiro blinked at it. He didn't want it.

"I like it raw," he confessed.

It was fine if Keith wanted to fuck him with a condom. Keith probably didn't want kids, and better Keith in a rubber than no Keith at all. But still. Still Shiro had that stupid thought.

_Let it be Keith._

Keith let the condom drop to the floor and began pulling off his clothes. Shiro followed suit, strangely relieved.

"I know I have to pull out," Keith muttered. "I'll pull out." 

Shiro said nothing. 

Keith's dick was already hard. Shiro reached for it. He was dripping, damp along his folds and upper thighs. He guided Keith there, feeling how hot and hard Keith's cock was. But Keith didn't push in right away. Instead he cupped Shiro's ass closer and fucked into Shiro's thighs. He again let Shiro's wet slick lube him up. His dick dragged along Shiro's folds, teasing. Shiro moaned and tried to sink down onto it. When Keith stepped back suddenly, he gave an involuntary whimper.

Keith turned towards the sofa and shoved aside its fluffy Altean pillows.

"Come on," he said. "I want you lying down. I--I want to see it."

There was something guilty in his tone. Shiro didn't want him to be guilty. They were both being reckless, and the lion's share of the blame would lie with Shiro, who should know better. But he found that he didn't -- couldn't -- really care. Not with this desperate need to have Keith fucking into him. His mouth was dry and his pussy was wet, and if Keith wanted to see him, then that was fine. He wanted Keith to see him. He knew what he wanted.

He climbed onto his back and grabbed a pillow, shoving it under his hips. He spread his legs wide. His pussy was fully on view, flushed red and glistening in the cool air. He fucked lazily up against nothing, eager for Keith's dick, his mouth, his fingers -- anything. Above him, Keith hovered with his eyes wide, like he liked what he saw.

"Go ahead," Shiro told him.

He didn't have to tell Keith twice. Keith spread his folds wide, licking stripes along that soft inner skin up to Shiro's clit. He slipped two fingers inside, fucking Shiro gently. Shiro shuddered a bit at the feeling -- warm tongue on his clit, fingers stretching his needy cunt. Keith sucked softly on his clitoris and his free hand rubbed along Shiro's slick, messy lips, adding to the sensation. Shiro felt the pressure building and whimpered again. He wanted more. 

Keith slipped a third finger inside. He used it to fuck Shiro a little wider, opening up that channel. It gave Shiro a little of the stretch he wanted, a little of the fullness. But it still wasn't enough. 

"Your dick," he said. "I want your dick."

His own was fully erect by now and he propped himself up on his elbows, panting, to get a better look over it. He wanted to see Keith when Keith entered him. Even after the finger-fucking, his opening looked so small next to Keith's dick. And his lips were so fat by now, swollen on pleasure. Keith rested that thick shaft on them for a moment, letting Shiro's folds caress it. 

Then he pushed in. Shiro gasped. He could feel Keith stretching him painfully, Keith's cock cramming into that little hole. Keith traced a finger along his sensitive clit and Shiro yelped with pleasure and pain at once. He was still dripping wet. It let Keith fuck in halfway and then glide out for a few strokes, thrusting into Shiro's moist hole lazily. The delicious rub soon overcame any brief pain. Keith's dick fucked in-out, plunging into him. Stretching his walls. But always halfway. Never quite as much as Shiro wanted. 

"Deeper," Shiro managed. "Deeper."

His pussy was clinging to Keith's dick, like it was begging for the same thing. 

Keith nodded, accepting the command, and thrust in all the way. It knocked Shiro's head back, left him gasping. So _full_. Keith fucked him properly now, deep thrusts, scraping that sensitive place inside him. Shiro couldn't think. 

His legs and ass bounced in time to Keith's thrusts. His pussy felt so good now, pulsating around Keith's dick. From this angle Keith could fuck him so deep that nearly every thrust hit his cervix. It was just rough enough to add an edge to his pleasure. Shiro panted hard and focused on that edge. The stimulation to his G-spot, the butterfly-brush to his womb. 

Soon he was coming with his pussy, clenching hard around Keith's dick. Keith wrapped a hand around his dick and stroked him off until he was coming with that, too. Every part of Shiro was delicious friction, fucked and rubbed at once. Fucked until all he felt was that raw, sobbing release. 

But even as he came down from the high, Keith was still pumping into him. His balls smacked into Shiro's wet folds. Shiro felt impaled with every stroke, every part of him too sensitive. It would start to feel good again soon, he knew, so he let his head loll back again. He fucked up into Keith as best he could. He panted, mouth open, as he concentrated on tightening his lower muscles, making that hot channel feel good for Keith.

Keith fed him two fingers again. They were wet: Shiro's come and Shiro's pussy juice. Shiro sucked it up. Keith spooned up more from his chest, from his glistening, well-fucked cunt. The taste was odd, but Shiro didn't complain. He liked having Keith in his mouth and pussy at once. Soon his pleasure was building again, his pussy tingling. But he wanted more.

"Your come," he said, without thinking. "Come in me, Keith. _Come_."

Keith's eyes locked on his, shocked.

Shiro lifted his flesh hand to caress Keith's jaw. To show he meant it. He wanted Keith's come. He wanted it to be Keith. He steadied himself on his elbows again and clenched around Keith's dick, trying to milk him. He wanted to be filled up. 

With a shout, Keith came. Shiro locked his legs around Keith's back to keep him in place, keep him from pulling out too soon. He could feel Keith gushing into him, hot and thick as cream. When Keith was done and softening inside him, all of that come was still there. Heavy. Risky. 

Keith slipped out of him. He left Shiro a dripping, well-fucked mess. But neither of them moved to clean him up. Keith pushed aside the pillow elevating Shiro's pussy and then curled up against his side, breathing hard. Shiro kissed him softly along his bottom lip and pulled him in closer. 

The monitors above them flashed. Soon they'd probably show that Keith's DNA wasn't compatible with Shiro's Galra womb. 

Shiro closed his legs tight and, for a few tics, fantasized otherwise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope these two clean up the lab afterwards, because Coran's a good dude and presumably his lab's not...for...that...


	6. Chapter 6

In the span of maybe one earth day (approximately seventy-five thousand tics, or the equivalent of one Altean midwinter night), Keith managed to fight first a Galra druid and then Zarkon himself.

Keith wasn't very good at listening to warnings or accepting limits. While the Red Lion hurtled through space, dizzyingly out of control thanks to Zarkon's beating and whatever it was that the Galra had done to their wormhole, Keith had some time to consider this.

Would he have tried to fight a Galra druid if Shiro had been there to tell him not to?

 _Maybe not,_ he decided.

Would he have tried to take out the universe's most ancient and evil overlord if Shiro had told him not to?

_Probably not. Probably definitely not._

Spinning horribly through space gave him time to think. Mostly about how, most of the time, he didn't think. But he _liked_ to think that he could get better about that with Shiro's help.

 _I just fought Zarkon, though_ , he thought. He felt his stomach plummeting and vomit edging its way up his throat.

That didn't necessarily have to do with Zarkon. He was flying at breakneck speed through space with no means of controlling his lion, so probably that was the reason he was feeling sick. Also, Shiro was out there somewhere, probably hurt, which didn't help. Also, when he cracked an eye open he could see a green planet in the distance, coming close fast. Crash landing soon. He gripped his controls and tried to get his lion to listen to him. By piloting, by yelling at it, by trying to go telepathic.

Mostly the Red Lion just sent back thoughts of feeling very, very sick. 

"Come on, cat!" Keith yelled, desperate.

 _Why am I so impulsive?_ the Red Lion sent back sadly. 

"Oh my fucking god," Keith said.

He didn't need his lion to be philosophical and regretful right now. He could do that for both of them. He pounded wildly at the controls to try and get it to come to order. They both needed to come to order. Their team was out there somewhere, and Shiro was out there somewhere, and flying uncontrolled through space wasn't going to help anybody.

Even if 'flying uncontrolled' was exactly what Keith was best at.

 _Especially with Shiro_ , the Red Lion pointed out.

It knew.

Scratch everything he'd been thinking before. He'd been very reckless with Shiro -- specifically with fucking Shiro -- and his magical robot space lion knew about it. 

This was now officially the worst earth day/Altean midwinter night/arbitrary seventy-five thousand tic span of time Keith had ever had. And he'd had some bad ones.

The Red Lion hurtled towards the planet. Keith braced himself for impact. It came with furious sound and knocked the wind out of him. Every part of him seemed to bang against something. His body protested with vicious pain. Parts of the lion shrieked and screamed -- metal crumpling and clanging -- and the monitors flashed warning once, twice. The cockpit went black. Plunged in darkness, head ringing, Keith finally let out a breath. 

He felt blood trickling down his right leg and left hand.

"Kitty?" he tried.

He would take the Red Lion talking about how reckless it was to fuck Shiro, if only it would come back on again. But it didn't. The only response was another shriek of machinery as the jaws snapped open. Green gas poured inside. For one panicked moment Keith wondered if it was poisonous or could suffocate him. His paladin suit should flash warnings across his mind if the atmosphere here was toxic, but now it didn't tell him anything. Maybe the air here was fine. Or maybe the suit was broken.

But then his helmet snapped on, Altean magic-tech shielding him, so maybe the suit wasn't that broken. He breathed out normally and climbed out of the lion, body protesting every step. His suit was torn where he'd banged against his lion too hard, but he would have to trust that it could do its job and still protect him from whatever was making the atmosphere such a violent shade of green. 

Nothing seemed to grow here, but everything was green. The rocky ground was green, and the sky was green, and everywhere pockets of green gas oozed lazily across the extremely green landscape. The Red Lion lay crumpled on its side. If Keith hadn't taxed it with fighting Zarkon, then maybe it could have survived the crash better. As it was, it seemed down completely. 

Something flashed in the distance and collided with the planet's surface, expelling more green gas everywhere. A Galra ship? Another lion? Shiro's lion?

He wanted to run to it, in case it was Shiro. He forced himself to stay where he was. If it was the Galra, his best bet was to get the Red Lion working again and make his escape. 

He was no Pidge or Hunk, but he knew his way around an engine. The only problem was that, as far as he could tell, everything about the Red Lion was part of its engine. Every part of it converted any energy it came into contact with into the fuel that kept the lion powered. This should not have made sense, but Hunk, Pidge, and the Alteans all insisted that it did. So now Keith surveyed a section of battered lion leg and shifted aside some of the metal plating, only to find a pulsing mess of wires underneath. They looked almost like veins, shunting some kind of fluid to and fro. Gingerly, Keith felt along them. They were hot. They reminded him of something.

Quintessence. It looked just like the Galra quintessence that had spilled on Keith and healed him. And before he could blink, one of the wires in his hand split neatly down the middle and spilled out its contents on his palm. The fluid mingled with his torn glove and the tacky mess of blood beneath. Keith cursed and tried to shake it off -- like the other quintessence, it _tingled_ in an unsettling way -- but there was no point. His hand no longer hurt. It had been healed. 

The wire knitted itself back up again in his hands, like the lion had meant to give Keith some of its energy. Keith cursed again. The Red Lion was healing him instead of itself. He hadn't asked for that. It was annoyingly Shiro-like behavior. 

"Stop that," he instructed, and ducked under the lion to try and get at the worst of the damage. 

As he worked on it, he couldn't stop thinking of Shiro. 

The last thing Keith had wanted to do was follow Shiro to the heart of the Galra empire. Despite his impulse control problems, Keith wasn't stupid. Tactically, he knew and Shiro knew and they all knew that delivering Voltron straight to Zarkon was a bad move. 

And, what's more, heading into Zarkon's headquarters with _Shiro_? No. Shiro had faced enough at the hands of the Galra.

If they were defeated out on some outpost, by some two-bit footsoldiers, then that was it. Defeat. Maybe death. But Keith had a feeling that, on the Galra mothership, somebody would know what Shiro was. Altered. Fertile.

Well, they couldn't have him. 

The lion under Keith's hands shifted, creaking fiercely. Even though it was no longer being piloted, it was still connected to its paladin. Still awake, then, and in perfect agreement with Keith. 

"Thanks," Keith told it. "Work with me now. We have to go find him and the others. Soon."

But when he ducked his head out from under the lion, he could see that they didn't have a lot of time. Whatever had landed further off was creating a huge cloud of green gas. Trying to extricate itself from the planet's surface? Coming closer? Hard to tell. 

Keith ducked back under and tried to make sense of the Red Lion again. Now that it was responding, he let it guide his work, let its responses more or less tell him what to do next. It seemed to want to be healed now, which was good. His leg still hurt, but he didn't want it going and sacrificing itself for him. That was a real design flaw. The lion was more important than the paladin. There had been other red paladins before him and there would probably be others after, but there was only one Red Lion. 

But he couldn't seem to work fast enough on it. The next time he looked out in the direction of the other crash, he saw that wave of green gas building, coming in their direction. Whatever had crashed had righted itself and was now headed straight for Keith and Red. Keith was drenched in panic.

"Come on," he told Red. In response one of Red's wires snapped out of its underside and sprayed Keith with quintessence again, catching not just his injured leg but his entire front. Again that healing tingling as the wire righted itself. Keith smacked the underside of his lion in frustration.

"Healing me isn't going to help!" he said. "We need to get out of here! We don't know if that's a Galra coming our way."

But as the crash-object came closer, he began to make out its form. Relief flooded him. That wasn't the Galra. It was the Castle of Lions. It had landed on the same planet as Keith. When it reached him, Coran and Allura ran out.

"We were able to stick tight to the lock we had on your lion's signal," Coran said breathlessly. "Good thing I put that on you when you decided to fight Zarkon."

"He _what_?"Allura said. 

But by the time Keith and Red were safe in the Castle, she understood. 

"You saw a chance to defeat Zarkon and end the Galra, so you took it," she said approvingly. "I wouldn't expect anything less."

Coran sputtered. 

"Zarkon is highly dangerous!" he said. 

"Keith probably didn't know just how dangerous, though," Allura said. "And it sounds like he acted to help Shiro."

That was true. But given how stupid Keith's actions had been, it was a surprise to find that Allura was willing to defend him like this. Keith felt a small spiral of shame. He'd proposed leaving her to Zarkon. That had been the right tactical decision. But it hadn't been the right way to approach a friend. 

It was hard sometimes to believe it, but she and Coran and the team -- they were his friends. Like Shiro. 

"What about finding Shiro and the others?" he said now.

"I can use the castle to search for them," said Allura. "It's tied to the lions, so we should be fine if everything is working."

"That may be a big _if_ ," Coran put in. "We just crash-landed, and we took a beating of our own in the fight with the Galra."

And after Coran had reviewed all the damage to the Castle, he pronounced it nearly as bad as the damage to the Red Lion. All told, it took several days to get it running: long, hazy days on the green planet with Coran and Allura running around from corner to corner cataloguing and fixing the damage. Allura also took charge of fixing Red, her natural telepathy enabling her to communicate even more easily with the lion than Keith did. 

This left Keith to do the odd jobs suitable for a human, pulling wires here or slotting metallic plates into place there. As he worked, again he couldn't help but think of Shiro. They had no idea where he was, or if the Galra had found him. But Allura had confirmed that he'd been hurt. 

That was the only fact they had. It wasn't a comforting fact. Keith had already mourned Shiro once. He didn't want to think about mourning him again. 

_He's fine,_ he told himself. _Shiro's fine. It's_ Shiro.

Once, he would have said this and thought about the Shiro before. Garrison hero Shiro, with his blinding smile and his perfect scores and his legendary good humor. Now he thought of the crease between Shiro's eyebrows when Shiro thought no one was looking, or the oddly vulnerable line of his naked back. The hatching of scars on his left hip. The way Shiro had survived, and would survive again.

And he thought, too, of everything that had happened between them since Shiro had come back. Kisses against Shiro's pecs, dips between Shiro's legs. Shiro's taste, Shiro's voice, the velvet-trap feel of him when Keith fucked into him. 

_He has to be fine,_ he thought desperately, _because I never had anybody, and now I have him._

There wasn't a lot of logic in that. But it was true. Keith was so used to being alone that Shiro's first disappearance from his life had been almost unsurprising. This second separation didn't feel the same. This time, Keith felt like he might be missing someone who was his: his leader, his lover, his Shiro. 

Shiro had always been important to him. But now he felt irreplaceable. 

"How soon can we locate the others?" he asked Coran when Coran came to check on the progress of his work.

"Soon, Keith," Coran promised. "We need to get our systems running first. We're no help to the others as we are, and at least they're with their lions."

Something occurred to Keith. 

"If they're hurt," he said, "then their lions will heal them, right?"

Coran stared at him. 

"Heal them?"

"With quintessence," Keith said. "It's what Red did to me."

Coran's eyebrows inched up his forehead. 

"With _quintessence_?"

He began to say something else, but snapped his mouth shut as though he were forcing it down.

"Can you describe what you mean by that?" he asked. 

Keith explained about the quintessence, and in the process tripped out a description of fighting the Galra druid and being healed by the Galra quintessence. Coran's eyebrows kept inching up, and up, and up.

When Keith was done, Coran said, "I-- Well." And then stopped.

"What?" Keith said, nervous now. "Is any of that surprising? Is quintessence supposed to do that?"

Coran seemed to decide something.

"Come on, Keith," he said. "We have to see something."

Keith put down the mass of coils he'd been detangling and trailed after Coran. They wound their way to the lab, which Keith had last seen when he and Shiro were hurriedly cleaning up the mess they'd left after fucking in it. Keith couldn't help but eye the sofa gingerly, as though Coran would be able to _tell_ somehow. But Coran was too focused on his monitors. He let out a string of words that sounded a lot like curse words, but more alien and Altean and involving yaks, for some reason.

"What is it?" Keith demanded, though he could see the results for himself. He could breed with Shiro. He could get Shiro pregnant. Him. Shiro. Pregnant. Defnitely a possibility.

This was especially odd because it looked like _Shiro_ couldn't get Shiro pregnant. 

"So they did alter his sperm?" Keith tried, when his brain had stopped making panicked foghorn noises. "They made it -- they made him not human, and--"

"That," Coran said, "is not the likeliest explanation."

Now it was Keith's turn to stare at Coran.

"Keith," Coran said gently, "Quintessence is pure fuel. For most species, touching it would burn or be outright toxic. It can even mutate some species into something else."

"You think I'm mutated?"

"I think you're not most species," Coran said.

Keith's brain jumped hastily to the worst possible conclusion, but for once Keith himself reeled back. 

"Who else isn't most species?" he said tightly. 

_Not them. Not them. It doesn't have to be them._

Coran looked at him sadly. He seemed to be trying to carefully arrange his words.

"We need more information," he said. "But if--if you were Galra--"

"I'm from earth," Keith blurted out. He hadn't really understood Shiro's panic, before. Sympathized, but not understood. Now he understood. His brain kept processing threat, but the threat was _him_ , just the sheer realization that something was wrong with him.

"If you were Galra, both of these things would make sense," Coran said. "The ability to breed with him, and the reaction to quintessence--"

"I'm not purple!" Keith said. "And the Red Lion wouldn't want me as a paladin if I were Galra. Right?"

Coran began to look uneasy.

"About that. There have been Galra paladins--"

" _What?_ "

Given Keith's heightened emotional state, this was probably the worst time for Allura to walk in, so of course this was exactly when she did.

"There you are," she said impatiently. "Why are you both in here screaming at each other? I've got the backup systems running and I'm already getting three lion signals."

"Princess--" Coran began.

"What Galra was ever a paladin?" Keith demanded. Coran and Allura exchanged a guilty look like they were caught-out over something. It put Keith frustratingly on the outside, but then Keith had always been on the outside, so at least this sense that he was onto something that others tried to hide was familiar, a bitter pleasure.

Then Allura's words caught up with him.

"Three?" he said. "We need four. Who's missing?"

Because this was the new worst seventy-five-thousand-tic span he had ever had, the answer was, predictably: Shiro.


	7. Chapter 7

Shiro's lion spat him onto something pink and spongy. It shuddered beneath him, giving way enough that he suffered nothing from the fall. The surface beneath his hands was cool and soft as velvet. His side throbbed with pain, but the rest of him was fine: basically unhurt.

Then the Black Lion left. That did hurt.

He tried to scramble up after it. With his injured side, he wasn't fast enough. The lion was gone, vanishing into a forest of forty-foot blue ferns. Shiro stumbled and fell again. Again the ground received him softly, but this time he landed on his bad side and had to lie still, breathing hard through the pain.

He touched the wound. There was fresh blood coming out under the caked-on mess on top. He looked up and saw a pink sky that sparkled, fringed on all sides by those massive ferns. He was in a clearing. They'd fallen first into some kind of lake, but the Black Lion had managed to bound out of it. Only to leave him here in this alien forest, bleeding and alone.

His connection to the lion wasn't strong enough. 

He'd failed. 

He knew he should get up and look for cover. This planet might have massive predators or other dangerous residents. He should find a place to stay safe, should _fight_. He had never really seemed to stop fighting, he thought. Not since they'd captured him on Kerberos. But now he couldn't make himself move. His side throbbed. He pressed his hands to it. His gloves were filthy, but his mind moved on automatic through every bit pre-Kerberos first aid training he'd ever received. Direct pressure to stop the bleeding. He closed his eyes and tried to focus on that.

But deep in his mind something whispered, _what you are is a broken soldier._

He didn't know how long he lay on the clearing floor, but at some point his eyes went damp. With his free (and equally filthy) hand, he reached up and pulled off his helmet to wipe away the wet on his face. He felt more numb than upset now, but his tear ducts didn't know that.

Tears were a human response, at least. The Galra hadn't changed that part of him. 

Hunger and worry for the others eventually forced him up. The hunger was more-or-less solved when he came across some spongy blue fruit growing around the clearing. His suit's controls didn't flash any warning symbols at him when he reached for it and it tasted edible, like chocolate laced with pineapple. So he would assume that it was fine to eat. He was sure he'd know in a bit if he had poisoned himself, but for now at least he wasn't starving.

He was still worried about the others, though. He didn't know where they were, if some had followed him here or if the wormhole had flung them to some different part of the universe. He owed it to them to get up and try to find the lion, so that he could try to find them. He set off through the blue ferns in the direction the Black Lion had gone, following the massive indentations it had left on the spongy pink ground.

He walked. And walked. Slowly, because now and then he had to stop and rest. But the pink sky didn't change much and neither did the landscape, and he never saw the lion. Eventually he came to a stream flowing over a bed of blood-red gems. The suit's controls confirmed that it was water and relatively clean, so he pulled off his gloves and washed his hands, then went upstream to drink. He hadn't realized how thirsty he was. When he was done drinking, he peeled off the upper portion of his suit and clothes to wash his wound. It hurt to get the blood-caked fabric off, but he knew he didn't want an infection. When he was done cleaning himself, he ripped up his shirt to make a bandage. It was the same shirt Keith had given him weeks and weeks ago, after pulling him off a Garrison examination table.

The thought of Keith was even more viciously painful than the wound in his side. Keith had moved to help him immediately when he'd lost control of his lion. For what? A leader who couldn't keep his team together? A failed weapon? A Galra -- a Galra _dam_?

For a few minutes he found it hard to breathe. Then he forced that down. 

_Don't think about it_ , he instructed himself. _Find the Black Lion. Get it to accept you again. Then find the others._

His biggest mistake, he thought, had been trying to rationalize or accept what he was now. He was battered. He was changed and broken. But that didn't matter. He had a duty to the team, who he'd led into danger, and to Allura, who had sacrificed herself for him. And to Keith. 

He wanted to get back to Keith very badly.

So he kept walking, following the trail of the lion. His suit recorded thousands of passing tics, but the pink sun crawled across the sky far more slowly than earth's sun. He stopped to rest when he needed to, making cover out of huge blue fern leaves. He ate more of the blue fruit, and drank again when he found the lake he and the lion must have crashed into initially. He walked, and walked, and walked.

And eventually he came to the edge of a high cliff. Here, the tracks vanished. The lion must have taken flight. Maybe it had left the planet entirely.

He felt his chest tighten. He was alone. He remembered how the druid -- Haggar -- had wanted to put him down. For a moment that felt completely right. What kind of end did he think he deserved, changed the way he was, dangerous the way he was, useless as he was?

There was pain in his chest and his ears now. Pressure building. He didn't think he was breathing right. 

Something squeaked. 

It was a small, tender sound. It startled him out of his panic. He turned and saw something come over the the spongy pink side of the cliff. It was covered in soft, downy matting, like puppy with overgrown hair or an especially luxurious walking fur collar. It squeaked again. He moved and it clung back, as though afraid.

"It's alright," he told it without thinking. 

Haggar had convinced him that he was a danger. He must be, if her plans had been to use him that way. But he didn't think he was a danger to this little creature. He didn't want to be. He stretched out a hand to it. It squeaked again and inched toward him, like it was starting to trust him.

The knot of anxiety in his chest dissipated a bit.

"Come on," he said. "It's okay."

 _I'm safe,_ he thought. _Not something twisted or broken or dangerous. Safe._

He wanted it to be true so badly. He crouched low on his knees and held both hands out to the creature.

There was a booming mechanical roar. The Black Lion bounded over the cliff. Shiro was thrown back by the force of its landing. It planted itself firmly between Shiro and the little furry creature. When Shiro looked up, the furry creature was gone.

No. Not gone. Reared up on its hind legs -- hundreds of hind legs, like a caterpillar, with little nails to burrow into the spongy ground. On its underside it had a huge red mouth with even more teeth than it had legs. It was hideous from this angle, and much larger than it had appeared at first. It screamed and lunged forwards. The lion caught it with its jaws and snapped it in two, spraying viscous green innards everywhere. Shiro watched, stunned, as more furry creatures came over the side of the cliff and the process repeated itself. Each time they tried to lunge at the Black Lion, the lion blocked and demolished them.

Predators. He cursed and stood, wanting to help the lion fight, but by then it was over. Ugly furry bodies covered the ground. The Black Lion turned its head and roared again, the sound shrill against the sparkling pink sky. Then it bounded off of the cliff and vanished into blue fern forest below.

Not gone, then. But not with Shiro, either. He stood unsteadily and looked out at the vast blue wilds, knowing he wouldn't be able to find it down there. He retreated back in the direction of clearing instead, looking for a safe place to rest and think. He needed some kind of plan to lure the lion back to him. It wouldn't be smart to plan out in the wild open, though, where any deceptively sweet-looking alien could stumble on him.

Eventually he found a cave. It was shallow but empty, carved out of slick red gem and hard to get into -- he had to scale a red gem cliff by the lake. But he thought that maybe those furry things wouldn't be able to get their nails into the gem deep enough to pull themselves in.

Shelter proved to be a smart move. The day dragged on, three times as long as a day on earth. This meant that the nights were three times as long as well. He spent them huddled in the warmest corner of the cave he could find, hearing the shrieks and squawks of planet's mostly-nocturnal wildlife. Sometimes, he thought he heard the metallic scraping of the Black Lion. But when he went to the edge of the cave, he always found that the nights here were too dark to make the lion out.

Over the next few days. he only saw it a few more times. Once it landed somewhere behind him. He turned, and there it was between the fern-trees, crouched low like a cat. He felt the spongy ground rumble when it pounced on something, but by the time he came close the lion had already gone. Green innards coated the forest floor.

This happened several more times, often with the furry creatures, and sometimes with creatures that seemed to have been bigger and even less appealing. Shiro couldn't really tell. Whenever he got to them, the lion was gone and the creatures were already in pieces. The Black Lion never stayed to explain what they were or how it knew to attack them.

Only once did he get a chance to talk to the Lion. It happened when he found a cluster of vivid orange berries on the far side of the lake. His suit registered no danger, so he told himself that it was fine to try these.

The blue fruit that grew everywhere didn't seem to be poisonous, exactly. But it sat heavy in his stomach and made him nauseous. At night, if he managed to sleep, he had wild and vivid dreams and he thought it might be the fruit. The oily smell of it was starting to become overpowering. Eating it increasingly left him feeling dizzy or faint, and there was a strange metallic taste in his mouth all the time now. He was wildly hungry for something, anything besides the fruit -- noodles, ice cream, Coran's space brine. All three at once.

He didn't have any of that, though, so he'd take the orange berries. At least they weren't blue. But when he reached for them, he felt the rush of air that meant the Black Lion was approaching. He heard it give a metallic rumble. It landed on the shore of the lake next to him and batted his arm with its metal snout. Shiro stared at it dumbly. It prodded at him until he had backed away from the berries, and then lifted its paw and deliberately crushed the entire bush. 

Then it turned to go.

"Wait," Shiro begged. "Why do you keep leaving?"

He sounded rough, desperate. There was no point in asking the question. He knew why the lion kept leaving. Shiro wasn't meant to be a paladin, not after being made into something sick and wrong. That was why their connection was weak. 

The Black Lion turned and stared at him. He couldn't figure out what it was trying to say. The ancient Alteans that had engineered it hadn't intended for it to be expressive. It pushed off from the spongy ground and took flight again, leaving Shiro alone with his thoughts. 

That was the last thing he wanted. The days continued to drag, and no matter how much he tried to avoid it, there was nothing to do but think of his missing team, Keith, and Haggar's words to him, her promise that he was nothing more than a tool for the Galra. 

When his nausea deepened into outright vomiting, he almost welcomed the distraction. But the vomiting wasn't the worst of it. Even as his side healed, his lower back began to hurt and his chest began to feel sore. Lower down, he woke sometimes to sticky white between his legs. 

And he _wanted_. He felt too untouched, too empty. He needed to be filled. He spent one long day with his feet dangling over the side of the cave, back on the floor, fucking his cunt with metal fingers. It wasn't as good as having Keith, but it was all he had. He felt sick and bloated, so he shouldn't have wanted sex. But his pussy didn't have that memo. It only seemed to hunger, to want to be stretched. He tried with his regular hand and it didn't fill him enough. Two metal fingers came close. Three. Four. In between foraging for fruit and feeling ill and looking for the Black Lion, this was how he filled his days, fucking more fingers into himself and still never quite getting what he wanted, always sobbing for more. For Keith. It was like the longer he went without seeing Keith, the more his pussy wanted Keith's dick.

At least getting himself off was a better pasttime than feeling sick and sorry for himself. And if he had to think of something, then thinking of Keith was better than thinking of his own failures. It hurt not to be with Keith. But the thought of Keith himself didn't hurt. Keith was out there somewhere -- strong, talented, and wild. That was a _good_ thought.

One day, he was carefully climbing down the slippery ledge outside his cliff when another thought came to him.

_I love him._

It wasn't surprising. What was surprising was that he had never thought it before. He didn't feel any differently about Keith than he had when he'd first crash-landed onto this planet. He couldn't seem to pinpoint when he _had_ felt differently about Keith -- back before Kerberos, probably. But in recent weeks there had been a change, something ardent and precious building, something more than just friendship.

 _I love him,_ he thought again, more deliberately this time, and was so distracted by the thought that he missed the foothold he was looking for. 

He fell. There weren't more than ten feet to fall, but he knew that the ground beneath the cave wasn't spongy pink, but littered with sharp red gems. He had a split-second to consider the pain, and then something rushed at him and caught him by the scruff of his suit. It flung him out of harm, onto a section of soft pink shore that left him unharmed. He landed on his back and scrambled up to face his rescuer.

The Black Lion. It actually bristled this time. A disapproving voice rang through his head.

_Cub!_

Shiro stared at it. Was that what it called him?

 _Not_ you. 

Oh.

Wait. What?

Abruptly, certain things began to make sense. His swollen, sensitive chest. The nausea and vomiting. The incredible urge for noodles dunked in space brine. Maybe even the insatiable horniness, though he'd always assumed that was more pregnancy myth than pregnancy fact.

 _Exactly_ , thought the Black Lion. It turned to go again.

"How does it help my cub for you to leave?" Shiro demanded, before it could fly away.

The Black Lion stopped. It sent Shiro a wave of exasperation, as though it thought he were very stupid.

_You cannot try to pilot with a cub inside you. You cannot fight. You must rest. You must take care. You must be protected._

"Leaving me doesn't protect me," Shiro protested. Leaving him just threw in his face how broken their connection was, how broken Shiro himself was.

 _If I am awake_ , the Black Lion said, sounding piqued, _then it is because we have kept our connection._

But it had still ignored his commands when they had last tried to face down the Galra, still delivered him straight to the mothership and spat him out.

The Black Lion surged forwards onto its front paws until its massive face was level with Shiro's. When it next thought, it sounded sad.

_I am connected to him as well, and have been for much longer._

"Him?" 

_My last paladin._

It sent Shiro the image of a purple figure. Cloaked. Enormous. Powerful. Shiro swallowed hard. More things began to make sense. 

_I cannot cast him off, but I cannot cast you off either,_ the Black Lion said gently. _And I have realized that you should not have been fighting. You have a cub._

The thought of a cub -- a baby -- sat uneasily next to the thought that Shiro shared his paladinship with Zarkon. He tried to pick his way to a more useful thought than either of these.

"I won't try to fight and I won't try to pilot, if that's what you want," he said. "But please don't go."

The Black Lion regarded him like it didn't really believe him. How had Shiro assumed this thing was not expressive? It was very expressive. He could tell that it didn't trust him. It didn't believe that he wouldn't try to get out of here once he was in the cockpit. And it wasn't wrong. Shiro wanted nothing more than to climb inside the lion and force it to help him find the others.

"You don't have to let me into the cockpit," he tried instead. "But you don't have to leave. Please. It doesn't help me or my cub to be alone."

He tried to send the lion the despair he'd felt ever since he'd ended up here, the worry, the horrible sense that he was broken. 

_Is this unusual for you?_ the Black Lion said. _You have always thought this. Since I met you._

It wasn't meant to be a cruel observation, but it still struck a blow. A part of Shiro had been convinced that no one had noticed. 

"It's worse when I have nothing to focus on but myself," he told the lion now. "And at night -- the nights are too long. It gets cold. I'm too sick to exercise, and all I can do is think."

Think and finger himself. But he couldn't explain that part to the Black Lion. And his words seemed to be enough. The lion lowered its haunches and settled in on the shore of the lake, still staring at Shiro. 

_Then I will not leave you alone,_ it told him. 

For the second time, wet pricked at his eyes. This time he didn't wipe the tracks away. He sat next to the lion on the shore and let it touch one metal claw to his stomach very, very gently. It seemed to like this cub idea. Shiro was glad someone did. Now that he was faced with this, the fact of his pregnancy seemed too large to contemplate, so large it hurt to think about. He focused on something else instead. 

"Why did you crush that berry bush?"

 _Poison_ , the lion said, like this should be obvious. 

And then it sent Shiro images of everything else it had done. It had picked a section of the planet that was overrun with vitamin-rich blue fruit and clean water. It had patrolled the boundaries of this zealously, and kept the whole clear of predators. All for its paladin. 

This was another huge fact that didn't seem real. But Shiro was grateful for it, the same way he was grateful that the lion had decided to stay with him. Over the next few days, when it wasn't fighting encroaching predators, it stood outside the cave, keeping watch over him so that he didn't fall again. 

They talked. Thought. Through the mind-link, it was the same thing. Shiro wanted to know about the past paladins, about the things the lion could do on its own and as a part of Voltron. But the lion didn't seem inclined to talk about itself. Mostly it liked to talk about Shiro and the cub. 

_You are not happy about it._

"I'm not anything about it," Shiro admitted. 

_But you thought you would be happy_. 

"It was stupid to think that."

This child grew now on an alien planet, in a universe ruled by the Galra. Its father was absent and its mother was nothing more than a battered hybrid. The baby would probably never see earth. It might never taste ice cream. It might not even be fully human. 

He put a hand carefully to his stomach. This was a Galra womb, and he was pretty sure he carried Galra eggs. The baby would be half-Galra. What would that do to it? Could it be born healthy? If it was, then what would life be like afterwards? What would it be like to grow up half-Galra, belonging in part to the most dangerous species in the galaxy?

The Black Lion scoffed. 

_There are only two species worth considering,_ it told him. _Lion, and non-lion. You are lion. So is your cub._

"You like to keep things simple, don't you?" Shiro told it. 

But things weren't simple and he knew it. He had no idea what Keith would think of a half-Galra child, even if this one managed to be born healthy and perfect otherwise. And he knew he couldn't foist it on Keith, couldn't force Keith to love it. 

Shiro would have to love it. Shiro was the stupid one who had wanted this to happen, had made this happen. So now Shiro was all this baby might have. 

"Sorry," he told it, during one long, dull night in the cave. "I wish you had somebody better. But I'll try to be good for you. Even if I have to find somebody else to be the black paladin, or you have to grow up in the Castle of Lions or something."

But that, if it happened, would be a long way away. Time passed slowly here and the baby grew just as slowly. Even though he examined his abdomen scrupulously, he was barely showing. It was just a slight fullness, a decided curve. He wondered if he was getting big fast enough. He wondered if the blue fruit was enough for the baby. Eventually he pestered the lion enough that it agreed to take him to the far side of the planet for something equally nutritious but at least different. Shiro was fine with that. 

He was less fine with the lion's proposal that he carry Shiro by the scruff of the neck. 

"Can't I ride on your back?"

_You may fall. It would be bad for--_

"The cub. Yeah, I get it."

So Shiro suffered an extremely undignified flight to the other side of the planet. The lion dropped him in a moonlit field of wild-growing fruit. They were strawberry-shaped and melon-sized and colored a vivid pink, but they tasted nothing like chocolate or pineapple. This was more a blend of broccoli and maple. He ate as many as he could while the lion patrolled the perimeter. 

When he was done, he laid down and tried to quell that empty ache in his pussy. He'd stopped using his Galra-made arm since he'd discovered that he was pregnant, but his normal fingers didn't fill him as much. He managed to wring out two orgasms and still felt needy. Above him, the Black Lion was flying loops around the area, watching for predators still. Shiro closed his eyes and fell into a restless sleep. 

He dreamed of Keith, of racing through the desert next to him on their bikes. The wound in his side, healing well in real life, throbbed so much in the dream that he pulled his bike over and gave up the race. That was fine. Keith was winning anyway. When he climbed off the bike and touched his side, he felt the skin give. His belly was swollen, and he could reach in through the side and feel something pulsing inside him, hot as a star.

Keith pulled his own bike around and brought it to a stop next to him, watching this happen.

"Isn't it disgusting?" he asked.

"No," Shiro said. "No. I can't think like that."

Even in the dream, he knew it was wrong to put expectations on it. To call it pure, or to call it wrong.

"It's just new," he told Keith. "I have to protect it."

Keith looked up at him, face serious. Shiro wanted so badly to touch him, but it felt like it wouldn't be allowed. Not with the hole in his side and the thing in his belly. 

He woke up, blinking dazedly. The Black Lion hovered over him.

 _You miss him_ , it said.

"Keith? Yes," Shiro admitted.

_If he could find you, would he protect the cub? Or would he and the others want you to fight?_

"I don't know how he'd feel about the cub," Shiro said slowly. "But he and the others wouldn't push me to do anything I wouldn't want to do."

Somehow he knew that was absolutely true. Shiro had known jailers and torturers, had known what it was to be helpless to the whims of others. The team was nothing like that. Keith was nothing like that. Even if Keith didn't want the baby, he would never try to push Shiro into the pilot's seat if Shiro didn't want to go.

 _Then I will let them find us_ , the Black Lion decided. _I have been blocking the signal_.

"You've been what?"

Guiltily, the lion took flight again. But after that it was hardly another extended day before the Castle of Lions appeared in the pink sky overhead. Shiro was so relieved that he couldn't even be angry with his lion for long. He stood on the spongy pink surface and waved desperately as the lion patrolled loops around him.

Before the castle even landed, something detached itself and came zooming towards them. The Red Lion. It had hardly touched the ground before Keith jumped out of it. He didn't make it far before the Black Lion barred his way.

"Shiro?"

"It's okay," Shiro called from behind the lion. "She's just -- just protective. I'm glad you guys found me."

"I have to tell you something," Keith said, tense.

Shiro cupped his rounded belly. He'd thought he wasn't showing much, but now he wondered what it would look like to Keith. He was unmistakably changed. Keith would notice. Maybe Keith would reject him. He wasn't sure he could blame Keith if he did. 

Shiro took a breath.

"I have to tell you something too," he said.


	8. Chapter 8

Shiro said he was pregnant, but he didn't need to say it. 

His belly was already rounding out. His chest looked puffier. When he submitted himself to a medical exam, Keith could see that the faint spray of beauty marks on his collarbone had darkened into a perfect constellation. And his hair wasn't just a little longer -- it looked thicker, too.

Shiro touched a hand to it when he caught Keith staring. 

"More white now," he guessed. He seemed self-conscious. Keith shook his head mutely. 

"Ah," Shiro said. "Then I guess it's dirty. I could use a shower."

He didn't look dirty, though. He was shirtless and a little sun-burned around the shoulders, with pink sand smudges on his face and a new scar forming on his side. But otherwise he was healthy and handsome, and when he looked around at the team his eyes were bright.

"Were you really down there the whole time?" Hunk asked. "Lance and Pidge and I all ended up in the Eldeaster System--"

"Gorgeous babes in the Eldeaster System--" Lance put in, waggling his eyebrows.

"Sure," Pidge said, "If you like insect mandibles and feelers."

"And after we found each other we started planet-hopping to avoid the Galra. But you were just...there. What did you eat? Is there food down there?"

"And is it healthy?" Coran put in, "Because we'll have to put you on a healthier diet from now on."

Lance said, "Xifelle didn't have feelers!" 

Allura said, "I notice that you don't say she didn't have insect mandibles."

"Those were her _lips_."

Hunk was still on the subject of Shiro's diet. "I mean, obviously there's food because you're here and you obviously didn't starve, but--"

Pidge said, "You kissed a bug-girl--"

"Emphasis on girl! She had mostly girl parts! Only some bug parts!"

At this point Shiro held up a hand, a little desperate.

"Okay," he said. "I'm glad to see you all. Even if I'm pregnant, you got lost, Coran's rethinking the menu, and... Lance kissed a bug. Apparently."

"Girl-bug," Lance said, smug. 

"The food down there is mostly blue fruit," Shiro continued, before Hunk could butt in. "And sometimes it's pink fruit. And I'm glad I don't have to eat it anymore. I was getting kind of sick of it, to be honest."

"Uh-huh, uh-huh," Hunk said, "But, hypothetically, if we wanted to go get some of this blue and pink fruit--"

"Who cares," Pidge said impatiently. "This is all stupid. Shiro's back and he has a _baby_."

Keith could have hugged her. It was fine for them to talk about the Eldeaster System and fruit and making out with bugs, but this whole time a very small voice in the back of his head had been getting progressively louder.

Baby.

 _Baby_.

 _ **BABY**_.

A Galra baby. A Galra baby that Shiro didn't know would be Galra. That reveal had stayed trapped in Keith's mouth. Not even the team knew yet. Only him, Coran, and Allura. 

Coran and Allura were very good at keeping secrets, it turned out. Like Zarkon being the original Black Paladin, a Galra Paladin. And now Keith, a Galra paladin for the new generation. 

It didn't make sense. Keith didn't look Galra. But Coran said they had powerful magic, and to a Galra druid changing appearances would be nothing.

"I'm not a Galra druid," Keith had insisted. "I'm not a Galra _anything_."

But beneath the fog of panic and anger, a part of him was starting to see that he couldn't be a human anything, either. He had no background, no family, nothing to tie him to people. He seemed more suited to loneliness than the average human. He healed from quintessence. He'd been able to track the Blue Lion's signals across the desert, relying on sense and instinct more than technological know-how. And he had wanted to _mate_ Shiro, like an animal. 

"The Galra have been vicious and brutal," Coran had told him, "but many of them have made excellent paladins. They were not always evil, Keith."

Since they were evil now, and he'd gone and knocked Shiro up with one, that wasn't a lot of comfort. 

Now they all looked expectantly at Shiro's belly. Even Shiro looked at Shiro's belly. Only he didn't look expectant. More resigned. When he next spoke, he addressed Coran. 

"I just want to know if it's viable," he said. "Can I keep it alive?"

"Do you want to?" Allura asked. There wasn't any cruelty in it. Just brisk surprise, like a general who'd discovered some strange quirk about the landscape.

"It didn't ask to be conceived," Shiro said carefully now. "That's on me."

Was it Keith's imagination, or was everyone avoiding looking at him? 

He wanted to correct Shiro, but his mouth still trapped his words. He felt like the worst kind of coward. 

Shiro continued, "And I figured you guys wouldn't have any way to terminate--"

"Well, you can terminate it telepathically," Allura said. 

But after a moment of all the paladins looking at her in confusion, something clicked. She sighed. 

"Right," she said. "I suppose humans can't do that."

"That would be super useful, but no, we can't," Pidge said. 

"And in this case I'm not sure I want to," Shiro said. "I did think about it, but if it's viable then I think I want to give it a fighting chance to be born." 

In Keith's mind, the next words were very loud and clear. 

_I'm Galra. It's Galra._

But he couldn't bring himself to say that in front of the team. They were all fixated now on the sight of Coran hovering around Shiro's belly with some kind of monitor in hand. He twirled one end of his mustache pensively with a finger. Behind him, Lance looked worried and Hunk was actually biting his nails in anxiety. 

"There's no reason to think this child can't be born," Coran said finally. 

Hunk audibly exhaled with relief. Everyone looked relieved, actually, even Allura. And Keith himself was relieved, even though he was still panicking about the Galra thing. Something about Shiro's tone when he said he wanted to give the baby a fighting chance --

Did Shiro want this?

It was a stupid question. Even if he did want the baby right now, he probably wouldn't want it once Keith explained the truth to him. But the thought that he _could_ want it was heady. 

Keith had wanted it, too, back before he knew the truth. 

He had to tell Shiro. Now. Before Shiro made plans for this. But he couldn't seem to make himself look at Shiro for too long. This was the newest Shiro yet, this glowing, calm being that was carrying his child. Keith couldn't bear to lie to him, but he couldn't seem to own up to the truth right now either. 

He looked to Allura instead. She was regarding him. For some reason it was her words that rang through his head now. 

_In Altea, when someone betrays you, it's like they die. The person they were before the betrayal is someone you mourn. And the traitor is the person who killed them._

_So I didn't think Zarkon could still wield the bayard or that he would acknowledge the lion. I thought of Zarkon as a different person entirely._

Keith hadn't thought that was a good enough explanation for keeping them in the dark so long. But he understood this idea that parts of you could die, and then other parts emerge, new and raw. Shiro had lost his Garrison pilot's wonder, come back fractured. But strong, too. Next to a change like that, Keith becoming Galra was nothing.

No. Not becoming. Being. He was Galra, and apparently always had been. But he couldn't shake the feeling that saying it out loud would be like presenting himself as an Altean traitor. The Keith Shiro knew and wanted -- _that_ Keith wasn't Galra. So that Keith had to be gone now, replaced by this new one.

Shiro had no reason to want this new one. Shiro had no reason to want anything to do with a Galra. 

Keith took a breath.

"We have to talk," he said, his words too loud in the lull that had followed Coran's announcement. "Just me and Shiro."

Lance's opposition to anything Keith proposed was instinctive.

"Why do _you_ get to talk to--"

Then he trailed off. Even he knew why, of course. Hunk carefully wrapped him in a bear hug and carried him out of the room before he could embarrass himself further. Pidge pushed her glasses up on her nose and, after shooting Keith an inscrutable and somehow vaguely threatening look -- _you better not mess this up_ \-- followed after Hunk and Lance. This left Coran and Allura.

Coran put down the monitor and stared at the princess, making her the decisionmaker. For some reason this felt fraught. Keith was Galra. The Galra had destroyed her people. Even if she had her own secrets in turn, she had every right to expose Keith's, to tell Shiro what Keith was. Something dangerous.

But she didn't tell Shiro anything at all. Instead, she turned to Keith. She gave a half-bow, a dip of her head and shoulders that seemed to enhance her power rather than dim it. No obsequiousness. Only respect.

"If you must reveal what we have revealed to you," she said, the phrase sounding like a ritual, somehow, "it will be no offense to us. Let no secret we have given be a gag to you. Let none of our words be a burden."

Then she and Coran swept away. Keith was left blinking after them.

"Oh...kay," Shiro said. "I feel like that's something I should ask about."

But he shouldn't have to ask. Keith had to tell him and be done with it. He let the easy secret slip first, after a half-second of panicky gratitude over Allura's conduct.

"She and Coran didn't tell us this before, but the original Black Paladin was--"

"Zarkon," Shiro said. Keith stared at him. Shiro ran a hand through his hair, grimacing.

"Black told me," he explained. "It could end up being a problem. They still have a bond."

That knocked Keith askew. 

"Your lion has to sever it. Zarkon's a monster," he told Shiro. "Black should never have bonded with him in the first place. It's a stupid move to keep up a bond with--"

"Black's not stupid," Shiro said. "And I think she knows it didn't turn out well." His voice was even, not unkind. But there was a note of warning in it. Keith would have kept talking anyway, but common sense caught up with him. If this bond with Zarkon was something the Black Lion should regret, then what about Shiro's bond with _him_?

Genetically, biologically, Keith was no less a monster than Zarkon was.

He took a breath. He had to say it. Owed it to Shiro to say it.

"I--"

But he couldn't get it out. 

He'd mentioned it to Coran and Allura a thousand times in the past few weeks, mostly because he'd been refusing to believe it. But now he couldn't get it _out_. To say it to Shiro would make it real. Something he could never take back. Something that would rob -- would rob him of _this_. Not Shiro, because he couldn't really lay claim to Shiro. But the easy way Shiro sat back and gave Keith time to form words, something few people besides Shiro ever did. The way Shiro let Keith see when he was flagging, when his energy was low. That rounded bump.

His voice trailed off into nothing. 

Inexplicably, something in Shiro wilted a little. Nobody else would have noticed it, probably, the way his jaw tensed and his eyes dimmed. But Keith noticed, because Shiro had trusted him enough to let him learn these minor tells.

"You don't want it," Shiro said. "It's okay, Keith."

That was the last thing Keith expected to hear. And the resigned, broken edge to Shiro's words was the last thing he _wanted_ to hear. He'd spent so many weeks time falling in love with this grimmer, more vulnerable Shiro that it was something of a shock to realize how badly he didn't want Shiro vulnerable, didn't want Shiro broken and battered. He didn't want a Shiro resigned to the idea that Keith would leave him behind.

"No," he said now. "Shiro, I-- That's not it. It's just that--"

Again the words ballooned in his throat and hung there, useless.

"It's okay," Shiro said again, gentle about it. "I get it. This is-- this baby is half-Galra for all we know. I'm not expecting you to want any baby, much less one that's--"

" _I'm_ Galra!"

Because somehow the implication, the understanding that Keith should want it _less_ because it was like him -- that did the trick. Because really the one who deserved to walk away was Shiro. Shiro deserved the chance to walk away from everything the Galra had done to him. 

Only now that he'd started talking, Keith couldn't stop.

"That's why this happened. We're compatible. Coran ran some tests to prove it, but even before that I was being healed by their quintessence, and I could understand what was going on with the Blue Lion in the desert even though I couldn't _understand_ it, and--"

"You could understand but you couldn't understand," Shiro repeated, like he could only hang on to that piece of it.

Keith nodded. Something occurred to him. 

"This -- none of this would have happened if it weren't for that. None of you would have ended up paladins. Hunk and Lance would be with their families. You wouldn't be pregnant--"

"Keith--" Shiro said.

Keith couldn't meet his eyes. "I should have known something about me was wrong, but--"

" _Keith_ ," Shiro said. He sounded resolute, like he'd found the thread of something he wanted to hold onto. "You're saying that none of this would have happened if you weren't Galra?"

Keith nodded. He hated to admit it but knew it would be a lie if he didn't. 

"I'd still be on a table if you weren't Galra."

Keith's eyes snapped up. Shiro didn't look disgusted, or angry, or anything like that. He stood tiredly and then, like this made sense, gently pulled Keith into the seat he'd vacated. Keith's chest was rising and falling too rapidly. This whole time he'd been breathing hard and had barely noticed through his panic. 

"It's okay," Shiro repeated, running a hand along Keith's arm to calm him. "Keith, it's okay."

"It's not," Keith bit out. "I'm Galra."

"You're Keith," Shiro said, shaking his head. One corner of his mouth quirked up wryly. "You could be a two-foot tall Arussian and you'd still be Keith, and that's all we want."

But now that Keith understood what it was -- to be changed, to be inhuman -- those words didn't seem so comforting.

"This makes me a danger," he bit out, furious at himself for admitting it. _You_ know. It's not like the Galra are good. They conquer. They enslave. They hurt."

Something in Shiro's mask of calm fractured, just a bit. Keith saw it happen and hated himself. 

But then Shiro was turning away to get another chair. He brought it close to Keith so that they could both sit. For a few minutes he didn't say anything. His hand curled over his bare stomach, and a part of Keith ached fiercely, wanting Shiro, wanting more for Shiro. 

"We do that too," Shiro said. 

"What?" Keith said. 

Shiro closed his eyes. There were deep wells of exhaustion under his lids, brushed by his lashes.

"Humans do that too," he said. "Conquer. Enslave. Hurt. We've done that for generations. On a smaller scale, maybe, but still." He shrugged. "We don't know that the Garrison would have been any kinder to me than the Galra were. Because humans, well. If you look at our history, we haven't been completely unlike the Galra. They're violent. But so are we humans."

Although his words were measured, when he opened his eyes again something about him looked wild with grief. 

"I think I spent too long acting like the worst thing was getting a new arm, or having parts of my body changed," he said. It sounded like a confession. Keith couldn't figure out why. 

"All that stuff is pretty bad, Shiro," he pointed out. 

Shiro shook his head. When he next spoke he did sound disgusted, but the disgust wasn't directed at Keith. 

"I killed people," he said. "Aliens. But they were still _people_. I tore into them with my bare hands. And if I was told to smear their blood on my face for the crowd, I learned to do it. And if I was told to smile and thank the crowd for the privilege, I learned to do that too."

"That's not your fault," Keith protested. 

"Maybe," Shiro said. "But I still did all that. And I didn't have to become a Galra to do it. I did it as me. As a human. That was the worst thing. I became a monster, and you don't need to be Galra to be a monster."

His normal hand, the hand on his stomach, was shaking. Not knowing what to do, Keith grabbed it and held on. 

"You're not a--"

"Then how can you be?" Shiro continued. Again his mouth curved wryly, but now there was a bitterness in it. "You haven't done a fraction of what I have. And this --" he gestured at his stomach with his metal hand "--I wanted this to be you. I'm still glad it's you. It could have been the Galra, the other Galra, and that felt like the worst possible outcome."

Keith swallowed hard. Shiro had wanted this. From him. The words bounced around in his brain, but he couldn't seem to tether them to anything concrete. They felt like a dream. 

"I wanted it to be you because that felt like a way to make all this good," Shiro said. "If I could, that's what I'd want. I'd want something good to come out of all of this. I don't know if that can happen--"

He stopped abruptly. That broken edge was there in his voice again and Keith hated it. 

Keith leaned in and kissed him. There was still so much to talk through, but Keith was too impulsive for that. He wasn't good at talking. He was good at daring, at flying in blind. Shiro kissed back, open-mouthed and vulnerable. Keith pulled him in by his shoulders and stroked his back, felt how broad and warm he was and the wet tracks on his cheeks. 

Somewhere in the middle of the kiss he figured out what he needed to say. He spoke it against Shiro's lips, low and urgent. 

"Do you still think it could be good with me?" 

"Yes," Shiro said. He said it without hesitation. 

"Don't you think I should -- I should hate it, though? What I am?"

"You're Keith," Shiro said. He pulled back. Suddenly he wasn't the troubled young man of two seconds ago, but the Black Paladin and Keith's leader. "You can't hate yourself. There's nothing to hate, do you understand? You're a good person no matter what else you are, and--"

"So why do you hate yourself?" Keith said, with reckless logic. 

Shiro flinched. Keith felt like he owed him an apology for that, but couldn't make himself commit to it. That was the right question. It felt like the right question. He took Shiro's hand again. 

_A way to make this all good._

Like a dare. Keith didn't know if they could pull it off. But he wanted to try. He pulled Shiro in again and kissed him again, still a soft brush against his lower lip. Shiro opened his mouth and let him deepen one of those brushes into something more. Keith was still acting on instinct. But sometimes that led you to the right places. 

"I'm not the person I was," Shiro said, against his mouth. It was another confession, something Shiro had to wrench out of himself. 

"I know," Keith said. He felt awkward answering. It was like he was giving Shiro permission to be upset, and Shiro didn't need permission for that. "It's okay," Keith said anyway. 

Shiro nodded slowly, but the pounding of his heart suggested that it would take more than this to make him believe it. Just like it would take more than Shiro's assurances to make Keith feel okay about being a Galra. But Keith wouldn't focus on that. This could be good anyway. Keith had to hold on to that. 

"Come on," he said.

He dragged Shiro up. Shiro let himself be dragged. This had always been amazing. _This_ being not so much the moments when Keith suggested something stupid or reckless or not particularly well-considered. But that tilt-a-whirl wonder Keith felt when thoughtful, considerate Shiro let Keith guide them anyway. He led them both now to Shiro's room. Keith's own was a mess, with coiling wires of quintessence all over the floor. Donated by Red. Keith had wanted them to prove -- something. That he wasn't a Galra. That his reaction to quintessence wasn't _that_ weird. Red, though, had probably just wanted Keith to accept the truth.

Keith wasn't ready yet to explain all this to Shiro. Soon. But not right now. Right now all he wanted was to make Shiro feel good.

He'd spent so much time thinking of Shiro -- his chest; his round, perfect nipples; his cock; his _pussy_. When he finally had Shiro lying naked on the berth in front of him, it was almost too much. He didn't know where to touch first. 

But Shiro was already spreading his legs and lifting aside his cock, so he definitely knew what Shiro wanted. Shiro's pussy was a slick, dusky pink, the outer lips fluttering open just slightly. Keith bent his head to it and gave it a reverent lick, reacquainting himself with the taste, the hitch of Shiro's breath. He rubbed the soft, tender skin for a bit, then took his hands and pushed together the folds, making them look fat and delectable. Shiro made a ragged, pleased sound. So Keith played with his cunt a few more times like this, plumping it, watching it go slick.

"Keith," Shiro said, strained. He pushed himself up onto his elbows. Keith couldn't decide if Shiro was encouraging or warning him. Maybe some of both.

"Good Keith or bad Keith?" he said. He had some of Shiro's slick on his hands, and he licked it off slowly, making sure Shiro could see him do this. Shiro's eyes went dark and wide.

"Good kind of bad," he said. "Again."

So Keith did it again a few times, loving how wet it made Shiro. His pussy squelched with every movement. His clit peeked out of the hood now, swollen and demanding attention.

"Fuck me," Shiro said, between pants. 

"Soon," Keith promised. He leaned forward to gently push Shiro back down onto the pillow, then trailed his hands down Shiro's chest on a route back to his pussy. He had to stop, though, to admire Shiro's rounded pecs, the way the nipples looked long and dark. Keith spared a second to suckle one gently, thinking of Shiro swelling more here, of Shiro's chest getting heavy with milk. Shiro's breath caught sharply again, and Keith filed away the reaction for the future. He kissed along the curve of Shiro's belly and then went lower, giving sloppy wet sucks to the head of Shiro's dick. 

Shiro's hips bucked up. Keith pressed a finger into his cleft, which was now completely drenched. Keith took some time getting him wetter still, licking along that slit until Shiro was moaning softly. Then he attended to Shiro's clit, letting his tongue cradle it. He gave it wet, messy licks. When he pushed his finger inside Shiro, he met no resistance. 

He lined his hard cock up between Shiro's spread legs. He took it in hand and thrust the head up against Shiro's soft, bare lips, using his dick to part them and rubbing it briefly along the eager slit. He loved how soft and slippery Shiro was, how his folds caressed Keith's cock. Keith felt like he could get drunk on the sight of that needy pussy drooling on him.

Then he pushed inside. Shiro's pussy stretched obscenely to take him, folds clinging to Keith's dick. A moan tore out of Keith. He was sliding deep and slow into Shiro's channel and it was so tight, but still so soft and warm. There was no question of throwing on a condom now, no need, so Keith reveled in the soft scrape of skin on skin. Shiro's pussy was perfect raw. It clenched hot and wet around Keith, the ideal squeeze. 

When Keith was in him almost to the hilt, Shiro exhaled, like he finally had what he wanted. Keith fucked back out slow, letting him feel every inch of dick. Shiro moaned now, his pussy tightening up. Keith liked that. He rewarded it by thrusting in hard, knocking Shiro's head back. He pumped into Shiro in earnest now, dragging more moans out of him. 

The perfect friction of fucking him was so intense that Keith barely noticed the embarrassing sounds he must be making, the instinctive curses that tore out of him. He couldn't help that. Shiro looked amazing. His flesh hand tugged at his erect cock while the other hand played with his nipple. Further down, his pussy lips were wet and flushed, his clit still so insistent. 

But best of all was the gentle swell of Shiro's stomach in the middle. Keith spread a hand along it and focused on fucking Shiro, searching for the spot that Shiro liked best. He knew he found it when Shiro's moans became more ragged and satisfied. But Keith still wasn't feeling that little ring of muscle he wanted. He slid out reluctantly. Shiro made a sound like a whine. 

"Shiro," he said, aware that he was whining himself. Begging, really. "I want to go deeper."

They moved clumsily together, tugging one of Shiro's blankets off the berth and settling it on the floor. Then Shiro was straddling him, trapping Keith's still-hard dick against his lower stomach. He was panting with need but he moved deliberately, rubbing his slick pussy up and down the length of the shaft. His pussy lips were parted long the length, and felt satiny-wet against Keith's sensitive dick. It was a jolt of extra want, just when Keith thought he'd reached the height of want. He let out another string of curses without meaning to.

"Easy," Shiro instructed him, between hard pants that showed he was desperate for it too. He lifted himself up and took Keith's dick in hand, then sank himself onto it. Keith sucked in a breath. Shiro was coated in a thin sheen of sweat, gasping at the new intrusion. But he took control easily, fucking himself slowly at first and then getting into a clumsy rhythm. 

Keith's dick scraped along those sensitive walls as Shiro fucked himself open. Keith grabbed his hips and fucked up to help him. They moved like this until Shiro was fully impaled, Keith's dick crammed in deep, the head flush against Shiro's cervix. For a second Shiro looked overwhelmed. Keith pulled himself up and cupped his ass on instinct, helping him pull off a bit and then sink back down again. His dick found Shiro's sensitive spot again and rubbed along it. 

Before long Shiro was coming, clenching and seeping wet around Keith's cock. Keith had him up against the edge of the berth now, and fucked him deep through the orgasm, determined to make it good for him. When Keith came himself, Shiro's pussy was still shuddering around him. He shot his load deep inside, pumping Shiro full of come. As his dick went slack, he pulled out and admired the sight of Shiro's wet, messy cunt, dripping with their combined juices. 

Shiro looked exhausted, but his own dick was still hard, so Keith helped him rub off an orgasm that way, letting him shoot between them. Then he ran his fingers along the come on Shiro's stomach and down to collect the come that pooled in Shiro's pussy. He instinctively brought his fingers to his lips and tasted the mixture, liking it, not even realizing what he was doing until Shiro said, "Keith."

He snapped back to attention, but all Shiro said was, "That was good. Right?"

Keith nodded, not trusting himself to speak. It was more than good. All kinds of facts were crashing back into place around him -- he was still Galra, Shiro was still inadvisably pregnant, Shiro still maybe sometimes hated himself -- but that, _this_ right here between them. This was still good.

Shiro nodded back. 

"Thank you," he said. "Keith. I want this with you. Okay? Officially."

"I kind of got that," Keith said, and realized that it was true. Shiro wanted him, and Keith could believe that he did. Even with the Galra thing. Even with them fighting the deadliest force in the universe. Even with them sometimes making really stupid decisions, like fucking raw so often that they got Shiro pregnant with a Galra. 

"I want it too," Keith said. 

Because Shiro looked so tired, Keith helped him up and back into the berth. Even if Keith was a Galra, helping Shiro was second-nature to him. It was one thing he _knew_ was good, because Shiro was good. Keith knew that about him. And he seemed determined to believe the same about Keith. 

Before, Keith would have assumed it was easy for Shiro to trust in him like this. It was just who Shiro was: trusting, confidently open, a natural leader. But Shiro was a little shattered, too. At least enough that clearly he didn't really think _he_ was all that good, so to have him extend this kind of belief to Keith meant something. It made Keith feel, if not more human, then at least not full of despair about it.

It made Keith want to do the same for him. Lead his leader, when Shiro couldn't do it. Support Shiro when Shiro could. Be with him. He curled around Shiro. His hand found Shiro's belly. Things were uncertain right now, and they were neither of them ready for everything in their lives. 

But together, they would make this good.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for a prompter on the kinkmeme who wanted 1. Shiro with a vagina given by the Galra for the purposes of breeding him, 2. risky sex with Keith, and 3. 'five times' fic with creampies. All of those things are fun to write, so thanks a lot to that prompter.


End file.
